FILM-FORWARD.COMReviews of Recent Independent, Foreign, & Documentary Films in Theaters and DVD/Home Video
STEAL ME
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
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