At the Movies - 'White Oleander'

The Associated Press

Alison Lohman really is as good as you've heard.

As the star of "White Oleander," the 23-year-old actress gets top billing over Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin Wright Penn and Renee Zellweger -- actresses with much more collective experience and marquee value -- and she matches their poise and strength, scene for scene.

In other actresses' hands, the material might have gotten mired in the melodrama of a Lifetime network-style made-for-TV movie. But their performances -- with supporting work from Patrick Fugit, Cole Hauser and Noah Wyle -- raise "White Oleander" to a level that's far more tolerable, and often moving.

At times, though, the film reaches for a poetry that eludes its grasp. In adapting Janet Fitch's novel of the same name (a May 1999 Oprah book club selection), screenwriter Mary Agnes Donaghue (who also wrote "Beaches") may have been too faithful. Words that clang to the ear probably looked better on the page.

"I couldn't understand the beginning until I got to the end," Lohman's character, Astrid, says in a wistful early voiceover.

Her uncompromising mother, Ingrid (played by Pfeiffer), advises her: "Loneliness is the human condition. No one is ever going to fill that space," and "Love humiliates you. Hatred cradles you."

Between 15 and 18, Astrid bounces between foster homes after her bohemian artist mother kills her own boyfriend. (Ingrid mixes him a drink for him that contains oleander, a flower that creates its own poison for protection, hence the title.)

The film frankly depicts how a daughter comes to realize her mother isn't perfect, and how devastating it can be to find out that the woman who raised you is flawed, even dangerous.

Astrid has that epiphany at a fragile, formative time, and must figure out who she is with the help of not just one female role model, but several, who change her in vastly different ways.

With Starr (Wright Penn), a former stripper and recovering alcoholic who has vocally accepted Jesus Christ as her personal savior, Astrid wears tight, bright clothing and a cross around her neck.

At a school for troubled and orphaned kids, she finds that being artistic and pretty is a liability, so she chops her long blond locks with a knife.

When she moves into a Malibu mansion with Claire (Zellweger), an actress, Astrid may have found a perfect fit: Someone who needs a daughter as much as she needs a mother. But Claire's emotional instability destroys that relationship, too.

Each time Astrid visits Ingrid in prison, she has a different look and attitude; each time Ingrid disapproves, because it represents a loss of control. (Ingrid, by the way, only gets better looking in prison; by the end, she's impossibly luminous.)

The confrontations between mother and daughter -- and a tense meeting between Ingrid and Claire -- provide the movie's emotional core, and director Peter Kosminsky wisely plays these scenes simply, allowing the performances to stand on their own.

Astrid also has some touching scenes with a boy at school (Fugit, who's seriously sprouted since "Almost Famous" two years ago). But their time together on-screen unfortunately is limited; this is a movie that belongs to the women.

Wright Penn is authentically trashy and twangy without being a caricature. Zellweger makes her character both likable and vulnerable in an unforced way. And Pfeiffer, always beautiful, shows she can also be brutal.

But Lohman has the hardest job of all, because she has to play an ever-changing character; she always makes it believable, and in the process, has made herself a star.

"White Oleander," a Warner Bros. release, is rated PG-13 for mature thematic elements concerning dysfunctional relationships, drug content, language, sexuality and violence. Running time: 110 minutes. Three stars out of four.