Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

DANDELION
Directed by: Mark Milgard.
Produced by: Molly Mayeux.
Written by: Mark Milgard, R.D. Murphy & Robb Williamson.
Director of Photography: Tim Orr.
Edited by: Amy E. Duddleston.
Music by: Robb Williamson.
Released by: International Film Circuit.
Country of Origin: USA. 93 min. Not Rated.
With: Vincent Kartheiser, Taryn Manning, Arliss Howard & Mare Winningham.

As far as his screenplay goes, Mark Milgard's Dandelion could have ended up on the dusty shelf along with other teen-romance flicks. But his evocation of a specific place - the waves of windblown, golden wheat fields in the rural West - luckily engulfs the shortcomings of his compact, if a little underdeveloped, debut feature film.

Mason Mullich (Vincent Kartheiser), a lonesome Idaho teenager, frolics with a gun and contemplates death like it's his hobby. But Kartheiser's Mason is no morose Donnie Darko, instead he is the single beacon of goodness in his bleak life, having a emotionally stunted, politically-aspiring father (played with convincing complexity by Arliss Howard) and a submissive, heavy-drinking mother (Mare Winningham). Conveniently enough, deliverance comes to the love-starved Mason in a form of a new girl in town, Danny (Taryn Manning). But just as the plot turns into the stuff of A Walk to Remember, Milgard sends off Mason to juvenile detention for involvement in a hit-and-run incident actually committed by his father. But the two years of imprisonment is promptly skipped over. Milgard's interest lies in Mason's return to town and his reconciliation with his beleaguered family as well as with Danny. But Mason is about to learn that life can challenge his will to transcend the most painful of times.

Kartheiser retains a serene, underplayed performance throughout that is not at all unaffecting, but it also makes the film's sprawling vistas all the more necessary to reflect Mason's transforming consciousness. Influenced by the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick, cinematographer Tim Orr's images, combined with indie-rock songs and the score by Robb Williamson, allow Milgard to indulge in a series of dream-like states. Although Kartheiser and Manning convey a fragile and believable onscreen chemistry, the truth is that all the actors seem more capable than the flat characterizations of the film. At a time when Prozac is popped like candy and death may seem the easy way out for troubled youths (as in the upcoming The Chumscrubber), a teenager putting up a fight against the hardships of life, however two-dimensional, is a refreshing change. Marie Iida
October 7, 2005