"…Reviewing My Options..."
Jennifer Wilson sticks a safety pin in her palm to draw
blood onto a typically morose diatribe on parchment paper as she watches a
cheery Partridge Family re-run on television (David Cassidy singing "I
think I love you..."). Her bedroom would make The Addams Family proud.
Plastic skeletons hang from the mirror, black and silver skull murals adorn the
wardrobe, decapitated girly toy dolls stabbed with safety pins and needles sit
beside naked shop mannequins covered in black eyeliner and blood. This is the
kind of doom-filled bedroom "Game of Thrones" set designers would
wander around looking for good ideas.
Jay is miserable to a degree that is hilarious and
pathological (the lovely and talented Leelee Sobieski). She's alienated
everyone at school with how she acts and looks (tattoos, piercings, hoodies,
everything in black), hasn't had a boyfriend, her mother's a hyperactive
re-married wreck and her wig-wearing step-father seems absent to the world from
the waist up (fabulous work by Carol Kane and Michael McKean). Jay looks at
people through binoculars - backwards - because they seem more fun that way.
She also enjoys lying on graves feeling the 'energy' of women who have passed
and sees her beloved dead grandmother sat opposite her at the dinner table as
mother serves up yet more leftover Brisket. Jay throws a paper-glider from her
bedroom window each day to the uncaring World outside with her latest eulogy
statement. She even self-inflicts on her arms when she's in real pain. You
could say the young Californian lady has her 'issues'...
One day Jay heads into where the real money is at - the
Century City shopping mall in Los Angeles. Having been chucked out of every
clothing store for looking like Edward Scissorhands on a Goth tip and scaring
the Bejayzuss out of the customers - she ends up outside a high end clothing
store called Rutherfords. Inside she sees the cardigan wearing,
oversized-slacks owning Randall unsuccessfully trying to dress an armless
female mannequin in the store window. For some reason Jay takes a shine to this
slightly odd and sad man. However it turns out Randall Harris is not such a
drip - he's witty, just as quick with the retort and although he's a guarded
soul too - Randall is older, wiser and somehow more kindly (a fantastically
effecting Albert Brooks).
So in a moment of olive branch and spurred on by her obvious
intelligence and initiative - Manager Randall offers the crazy-looking brat a
storeroom job colour-coding the men's shirts. It isn't long before Randall's
goodness starts to rid her of those dark-world trappings and from underneath
all that black make-up emerges something pretty - even loveable and fun. Soon
they're hanging out, visiting her drinking haunts, having laughs, playing
records in stores and both slowly opening up to a world of possibilities that
isn't so isolated and alone anymore. They may even be slightly in love, as she
gets jealous of older women and their attention to Randall. Jay even hooks up
with her pot-smoking freewheeling Dad again (typically funny and great work
from John Goodman) and things seem good for a while...
A relationship between a pretty seventeen year-old and a
rotund 49 year-old male with a moustache, curly hair and no dress sense might
descend into farce and even become pervy - or simply be on screen for the sake
of audience shock value. But long-time Actress and Director Christine Lahti is
careful to keep their time together on an even keel. But better than that -
there's a genuine chemistry of affection between actors Sobieski and Brooks
that fills every scene with a tenderness and admiration that is rare. These are
two lost souls helping each other come out of their darkness and loneliness -
and each scene they're together in bristles with that lovely hopefulness that
probably made the Director want to make the movie in the first place.
The burgeoning love between them is never consummated (not
that kind of tale) but Jay soon discovers that Randall Harris is keeping a
secret about a wife that left decades back, a son he never knew and a medical
condition he's kept hidden from everyone (the woman who visits at the shop is a
nurse - Mary Kay Place as Patty). And on it goes to Jay desperately trying to
get back to a hospital in time with a young man in tow (Desmond Harrington) who
is just as moody and morose as she is...
I loved Christine Lahti in "Housekeeping" (a 1987
film that's long forgotten and criminally so) and I figured her "My First
Mister" would be touching - and it is. "You communicate with articles
not humans..." Jay says to neurotic Randall in a probing moment. She
honestly calls him "anal dude" in another and he doesn't mind because
deep down he knows she's right. He jokes back in the early part of their relationship
"We'll keep her in the store on a temporary basis in case she tries
suicide!" - while he later confesses on his home porch "I'm afraid of
everything...going to bed...waking up..." Astutely and beautifully
observed by Jill Franklyn (the Writer) - there's a dance of truth and
expression between the two lead characters that is both profound and warm and
not easy to get right.
Perhaps because of its slightly naff title this 2001 film never
seemed to get noticed - and to this day (2014) the HD version is only available
on a download (there's no BLU RAY). But this is one little tattoo on the
buttocks I suggest you get down and dirty with...
A tender and life-affirming movie - maybe one day "My
First Mister" will make it onto the new format. I will look forward
greatly to that...
