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Travel
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Travel
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Tumbleweeds (eng)
 Notching up yet another
ex-husband, abuse, and disappointment, Mary Jo grabs her daughter, Ava; and her tattered
shards of optimism and hits the road in search of a new love interest and support
provider. Ava convinces her mom to take a chance on life in the picture-perfect suburbs of
Starlight Beach. But within weeks of settling into independence, Mary Jo reconnects with a
truck driver from their travels and moves willfully into what seems like fated co-
dependency. With Ava enrolled in school and experiencing for the first time a sense of
normalcy and stability, Mary Jo wrestles with the impulse to run again, a decision that
this time may devastate the bond between mother and child. Starring: Janet McTeer ,
Kimberly Brown , Jay O. Sanders , Gavin O'Connor |
Review by : Michelle Tan
Click here for pictures
A
true story, this movie is...and how heart-warming it is too. Based on the memoirs of
Angela Shelton about the road-trips taken with her mom, it is refreshing to see a
mother-daughter relationship movie where one is not at the other's throat.
British actress Janet McTeer is
utterly excellent, with Southern accent and all, as the three-times-married brash Mary Jo
Walker who drags and uproot her long-suffering 12 year old daughter Ava everytime her
relationship with men fails. They live life as a road trip, from one motel to another
before Mary Jo shacks up with the next guy. Mary Jo seems to be a magnet for attracting
the wrong guys, the abusive kind, and when they start to get rough, she packs up and leave
with Ava...so much so that Ava prepares an 'escape route' when they moved in with trucker
Jack Ranson, just in case.
We feel the poignancy of Mary Jo's
situation, she is not trash, she is not cheap. She just tries so hard to make her
relationships work, but she is what she is. She has had more than her share of failed
relationships that she is just too overly cautious and prefers to hit the road at the
first sign of trouble than to stick around and patch things up.
Fresh out of another failed
relationship, the mother-daughter pair settled in the town Starlight Beach, California,
and settled into a new life. Reaching adolescence, Ava starts to make new friends and she
is now at an age where friends and roots matter and are important to her even if they
aren't to her mom.
The whole merry-go-round started
again, much to Ava's dismay, when Mary Jo met up with trucker Jack (they met much earlier
when he fixed her busted radiotor hose) and both mother and daughter moved in with him.
Jack is not a bum, nor is he abusive. He tries hard too, but Mary Jo is so set in her ways
that the relationship spelled 'bust' from the onset. Here's the joy of watching this film.
All along the line, when Mary Jo sees guys, Ava knows to distract her mother by whatever
means possible.
The endearing Kimberly Brown holds
her own with Janet McTeer. Her feisty and foul-mouthed Ava is a daughter who is not
judgmental of Mary Jo, even if she knows every relationship her mother enters into is
bound for failure.
'Tumbleweed's offers up a mother daughter relationship that feels
authentic. The movie has a reality feel and good supporting characters that complements
the script nicely, and that you won't come to the automatic conclusion that every time you
see a new face, something is going to happen. Directed by Gavin O'Conner, who also
co-wrote the script with his ex-wife, Angela Shelton, O'Conner also starred in this movie
as Jack Ranson.
There's Laurie (Laurel Holliman), whom Mary Jo works with at her
new job, hired by a really weird fella (Michael J. Pollard). We are also introduced to Dan
(Jay O. Sanders),who works in the same company, who is so nice that he is often
overlooked. He teaches Ava all about Shakespeare.
This is a beautiful mother-daughter relationship show, and my
only complaint is that I would have liked to more of ol' Dan. Throughly enjoyable! |
  
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