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KIMBERLY J. BROWN

JAY O. SANDERS

LOIS SMITH

LAUREL HOLLOMAN

MICHAEL J. POLLARD

NOAH EMMERICH

GAVIN O’CONNOR

Sometimes the stars align just right and a small, independently made movie not only turns out well but receives the acclaim it deserves. Tumbleweeds enjoyed that kind of reception in 1999, earning writer-director Gavin O’Connor the Filmmakers Trophy at the Sundance Film Festival and its leading lady, Janet McTeer, a host of honors including an Academy Award nomination. Her young costar, Kimberly J. Brown, won an Independent Spirit Award for Best Debut Performance.

McTeer could hardly be classified as an unknown, as she won a Tony Award two years earlier for her performance as Nora in Ibsen’s A Doll’s House on Broadway, but she was still a new face to most Americans who couldn’t have guessed that she was British from her convincing performance as a Southerner in this film. Had we known her better we might have been more aware, which wouldn’t have been to her advantage or ours.

McTeer plays a woman named Mary Jo who’s constantly packing her bags and moving, mindless of the damage she’s inflicting on her daughter, Ava. Her latest spur-of-the-moment jaunt has brought them to San Diego, where the weather is great and the possibilities seem as bright as the blue sky that greets them. But Mary Jo is forever in search of a guy who will take care of her, and that usually leads to trouble.

She thinks she’s found one this time in the person of a truck driver and all-around good guy named Jack. Before long she and Ava move in with him and Ava adjusts to life at yet another new school where—for once—she senses an opportunity to shine in the play they’re about to put on. But trouble always seems to lurk around the corner for Mary Jo as she repeatedly makes the same mistakes and refuses to confront her culpability in those choices.

Tumbleweeds is a well-written drama that serves as a showcase for a gallery of fine performances—including such stalwart supporting actors as Jay O. Sanders and Michael J. Pollard as well as the film’s director (and cowriter) Gavin O’Connor as the truck driver, proving once again that you can’t size up a person by appearance alone.

137. TUVALU

(2000)

Directed by Veit Helmer

Screenplay by Veit Helmer and Michaela Beck

Actors:

DENIS LAVANT

CHULPAN HAMATOVA

PHILIPPE CLAY

TERRENCE GILLESPIE

DJOKO ROSSICH (ROSIC)

Whimsy is not a commodity one finds very often in modern cinema. And there are few insults as searing as the critical putdown “forced whimsy.” But when I stumbled onto the German film Tuvalu, I was charmed by its distinctively quirky qualities. It is definitely one of a kind.

Unlike some attempts at creating a unique look and feel, this film, directed and cowritten by Veit Helmer, seems organic. It is mostly silent, with sound effects, music, and occasional verbal utterances, and styled in black-and-white wide screen with the look of hand tinting one associates with the early work of Georges Méliès.

Tuvalu has a dreamlike quality, as well, because its links to reality are so tenuous. The setting for most of the action is a once-grand, now-crumbling bathhouse that stands in the middle of nowhere, a surviving relic in a devastated city. Our hero, Anton (played by Frenchman Dennis Lavant), yearns to spend his life at sea, but struggles valiantly to keep the establishment going despite a paucity of customers, a stubborn plumbing system, falling plaster, and myriad other challenges. Anton is driven to succeed for the sake of his father, who is blind, and who—thanks to his resourceful son—believes that the bathhouse is still thriving and serving a large and happy clientele.

Anton’s brother Gregor does not share his sibling’s devotion to the bathhouse, or their father, and does his best to sabotage the operation, as a developer is interested in buying the property. In the process, he also torpedoes Anton’s budding romance with a lovely creature named Eva who has brought her father to the bathhouse.

Critics invoked such names as Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and Franz