*spoilers, whatever*
i didn't hate it. if anything, i'm pretty ambivalent. it didn't strike any response from me until the last ten minutes of the movie, when i predictably started to get a little moist about the eyes.
once i got over the uberhip language, i really paid attention. i didn't see it as all sunshine & happiness. i felt for Juno. for a smart-mouthed, brainy, pop culture junkie, the story seemed to be about a real loss of innocence.
i wrote in a a few years ago about how placing was a real loss of innocence. a part of me changed irreversibly. my steps were heavier. i looked at my life in a different way. i just brought a life, a person, into the world. me. i couldn't go back to the more carefree, fly by the seat of my pants lifestyle i had prior to pregnancy. granted, i didn't realize that right away. certainly not by the next seasonal change. i was just trying to resume my "normal life" by going out with my friends. and that's where Juno's story ends. but even though she resumes her "normal life", a part of her being is permanently changed. as viewers, we just don't get that far.
and also for Juno, how relationships aren't always mendable, in the case of the prospective adoptive parents, Mike and Vanessa. when Mike reveals that he's leaving Vanessa, that he's not sure he's ready to be a father (or if he'd be a good father), the stark betrayal on Juno's face crushed me. how the plans they'd made were dissolving right there, at that moment. discovering how someone really is deep down, the real truth, can be a reeling epiphany.
in the end i felt a little sad. not because it triggered my adoption stuff, or because a "comedy" was made about a personally sensitive subject, but i wonder how many girls & women who might find themselves in an unplanned pregnancy might have this film as their only frame of reference. i say that as someone who remembers clearly recalling "Immediate Family" when deciding my own adoption path.
3 comments:
I've got a post coming tomorrow or today or something about the same exact thing. Though now it seems irrelevant since you just wrote what I feel.
:)
Immediate Family was the adoption film de jour, circa 1989ish. The chain-smoking young mom, waving her cig around her new baby's face offered up a memorable stereotype.
T
I felt the same way you did. I felt her pain, I knew she felt pain. I saw too much of myself in her. And I do worry about the future, like what happens when she hits her 20's and she thinks she might want to know her son and the friendly Vanessa she knew is now too insecure and uptight to welcome the opportunity. (sorry, need to get off the bitter train!)
((((HUGS)))
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