STEAL ME
Directed & Written by: Melissa Painter.
Produced by: Carl Colpaert & Lee Caplin.
Director of Photography: Paul Ryan.
Edited by: Melissa Bretherton.
Music by: Jim Thomas.
Released by: Cineville.
Country of Origin: USA. 95 min. Not Rated.
With: Cara Seymour, Danny Alexander, Hunter Parrish, John Terry & Paz de la Huerta.

With his dark curly hair, teenage runaway Jake (Danny Alexander) is downright exotic in small town Montana. He seems to have popped out of nowhere. His air of mystery attracts everyone - jocks or the boy-next-door Tucker (Hunter Parrish), who catches Jake in the act of stealing his car radio. Instead of turning him in, Tucker treats the famished stranger to lunch. Intrigued by Jake, who tells of how he hitched a train searching for his mother (at the local bordello but she has since vanished), Tucker makes the stranger an offer, and Jake, in little time, moves from the barn into the home of Tucker's family. The real allure of room and board is Tucker's late-thirtyish mother, Sarah (Cara Seymour). On her guard, she privately warns her husband she has no room for anyone else. But from the numerous point-of-view shots of Jake staring at her blond head of hair, the feeling is not mutual.

The Oedipus complex and submerged homoeroticism are obvious but not heavy-handed. In most scenes, they are the overlooked pink elephants in the room. Thankfully, the plot is never overwrought, but it never fully ripens either, mostly because of some of the actors' self-consciousness and the stop-and-go pace. Admittedly, Jake is physically awkward, especially among women, but much of Alexander's line readings are also stiff. The cast doesn't quite have the ease and spontaneity of other coming-of-age dramas, like All the Real Girls or Mean Creek, and many of the static scenes are fragmented vignettes. They end before they start.

A subplot about Jake's fling with an older woman, which ends painfully and abruptly for the boy, comes across as The Door in the Floor lite. There's no hint at the possible abusive fallout of such a relationship. Rather than simmer with adolescent angst, the film's tone is like a lazy afternoon in Tucker's backyard, which is admittedly inviting with the Rocky Mountains in the background. But that being said, Steal Me's tentative coming of age is a refreshing change from other recent teen dramas - the bleak and pretentious The Chumscrubber (opening soon) or the misanthropic Pretty Persuasion. Kent Turner
September 9, 2005