David Waters
Occupation
Filmmaker
Blue Car Review
OK
Blue Car is tough, honest, and deeply felt, and all of that made me wish I liked it more. The debut film from writer-director Karen Moncrieff is a coming-of-age drama about Meg (Agnes Bruckner), a young poet with a miserable family life (suggested alternate title: Real White Girls Have Poems). Her mother (Margaret Colin) is overworked and cranky, her father left years ago and maintains his distanc,; and her sister Lily (Regan Arnold) mutilates herself in between hunger strikes. She finds solace in the extra attention given to her by Mr. Auster (David Strathairn), an English teacher who recognizes her skills--as well as her lower-middle-class beauty, of course.
In exploring this relationship, and virtually all of the relationships in the film, Moncrieff and her actors don't shy away from awkward, uncomfortable truths. Strathairn does especially well with this material; although there are only a few scenes of him teaching in front of the whole class, he captures the reserved vibe of a talented, unflashy high school English teacher as instantly as a snapshot. The audience's perception of the Auster character is most open to change over the film's 90 minutes, and Strathairn is a rock of believability, refusing to bother with cheap signifiers when Auster's actions become morally ambiguous (it may help if you find, as I do, almost any cast member from Sneakers infinitely watchable by association). Newcomer Agnes Brucker is equally reluctant to indulge in theatrics; armed with Bruckner's unfussy expressiveness, Meg's every decision is understandable.
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