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JunebugIt's always hard meeting the in-laws, as Chicago art dealer Madeleine (Davidtz) learns when she travels to rural North Carolina with her new husband George (Nivola) to introduce herself to his close-knit working-class clan. The culture clash between this sleek, British-born interloper and his prickly, suspicious relatives is the matter of Junebug, Phil Morrison's low-key study of Southern morals and manners. But it's his deft evocation of this unsophisticated yet deeply spiritual backwater that makes this subtle film shine.
George's possessive mother Peg (Weston), his taciturn dad Eugene (Wilson) and his resentful younger brother Johnny (McKenzie) react to his new bride with a mixture of bemusement and hostility. However, Johnny's pregnant wife Ashley (Adams) is thrilled to make her acquaintance, welcoming her as a sister and steering her gently through her insular community. Waddling around talking 10 to the dozen about nothing much in particular, Ashley seems blissfully unaware of how overwhelming her well-meant solicitudes can be. As the film develops, her openness and generosity acts as a soothing balm that helps heal long-standing rifts between brother and sibling, parent and child.
A humorous subplot sees Madeleine attempt to woo a good ol' boy artist whose unhinged tableaux of Redneck iconography typify what she patronisingly calls "outsider art". ("My job is to make the invisible visible," he mutters gnomically through teeth that will give you nightmares.) Of course, it's Madeleine who is the true outsider here, a fact that becomes increasingly apparent the more she tries to ingratiate herself with her new surroundings. ("We don't need a stranger coming in here messing things up!" sighs Peg. "She's no stranger - she's family," replies Eugene stoically.)
There aren't any fireworks in Junebug; indeed, the most dramatic scene involves Johnny's frustrated attempts to record a TV programme. Yet every moment rings true in a film that seduces the viewer with its languorous tone before delivering an emotional sucker punch that will have you sobbing in the aisles. In Amy Adams, meanwhile, it has a young actress of such stunning talent and irresistible vivacity you'll wish she was one of your relatives too.
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