6.3 | / 10 |
Users | 5.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A teenage orphan spends ten years traveling cross-country experiencing life, love and heartbreak.
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Dermot Mulroney, Donald Sutherland, Denise Richards, Michael VartanDrama | 100% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
English SDH
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 3.5 | |
Video | 3.5 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 2.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
There’s a reason most popular songs come in at around 3:05 and most feature films nowadays run between 90 minutes and two hours. Songs are hook laden creatures usually with easily remembered choruses that repeat and, if they involve “storytelling” at all, usually proscribe the tale to anecdotes and passing imagery. Films on the other hand are inherently visual, seeking to provide a coherent “arc” (as overused as that term has become), usually centered on a relatively few main characters (often just one, in fact). And that brings up the inherent difficulty with Jolene, an often touching and interesting film based on an E.L. Doctorow short story called Jolene: A Life which appeared in The New Yorker. The problem is Doctorow culled his inspiration from a Dolly Parton tune which has since gone down in the history books as one of the more provocative and iconic “story” songs, as brief as Parton’s story in “Jolene” is. Parton’s “Jolene” was an ode of desperation, told from the viewpoint of a troubled wife who was convinced the hussy Jolene was out to steal her husband. Doctorow expanded that glyph into a tempestuous story concentrating on ten years in the life of a southern belle, roughly from age 15 to 25, as she weathered a variety of personal storms and a series of failed relationships. Bringing Doctorow’s source story to the screen probably seemed like a good idea, despite the fact that Doctorow hasn’t exactly translated well to the cinematic medium (Ragtime had to wait for a Broadway musical version to really capture its zeitgeist, and Doctorow divorced himself from the film adaptation of his brilliant Billy Bathgate). But while the film offers an indisputably star-making performance by Jessica Chastain as the titular character, there are a number of unanswered questions which dramatically hobble this film almost from the get-go, making it seem almost like a dramatic parody (if such a thing exists) of the brilliant Patrick Dennis satire Little Me. Dennis, who rose to fame as the author of Auntie Mame, followed up that delicious piece with his faux autobiography of the much-married erstwhile Hollywood star Belle Poitrine, a woman who seemed to invite tragedy, at least insofar as choosing spouses occurred. (Little Me was itself musicalized and provided Sid Caesar a celebrated starring vehicle as he portrayed all of Poitrine’s many husbands). Jolene, unlike Little Me, doesn’t have a laugh in its bones, and that deadly earnestness sinks the film emotionally, as we travel a smarmy and tortured series of events with a heroine who has promise, but who seems to be almost gravitationally pulled toward unhealthy relationships.
Jolene's AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.35:1 just misses the mark of high definition excellence, perhaps due to its relatively smaller budget. This film is all over the place geographically, and perhaps ironically with its image quality as well. Several scenes bristle with really sharp and clear imagery, with excellent fine detail and nicely saturated color, and some of the location footage is really gorgeous looking. Other scenes, notably some in the psychiatric institution, almost seem as if they belong in another film. They're overly soft and the image almost seems intentionally desaturated. The bulk of the film certainly looks acceptable to very good, and few will have any major complaints overall about the image quality here. But Jolene occasionally at least has the look of a made for television movie, with a sort of middling and bland image quality that certainly isn't horrible by any standards, but really isn't mind-blowingly fantastic either.
Jolene's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 mix is really good as far as it goes, with excellent fidelity and really nice dynamic range, but its immersive opportunities are simply hobbled by the nature of the film itself, which is really kind of a quiet, dialogue driven piece. We do get nice moments of surround activity in several sequences, and there's fine attention to detail paid in placing ambient environmental effects around the sound field. The film has a huge array of source music underscore utilized throughout the story (though strangely Parton's "Jolene" isn't included), and those all sound fantastic. Dialogue is clean and clear, though always anchored front and center. The balance between all elements is artfully handled, and while Jolene doesn't offer a bunch of "wow" moments for sonic overkill, what's here is enjoyable and very well done.
Jolene is kind of a meandering mess of a film, too melodramatic for its own good and without a clear through-line helping us to understand this intriguing character. Too much seems to fall into Jolene's lap, including an awful lot of calamity, as if she's almost a female version of Candide attempting to find her best of all possible worlds. But if you can put aside the often ludicrous aspects of the plot, there are some great performances to be had here, including a nice bevy of turns by a fantastic supporting cast. The main draw of this film is indubitably the incredible work of Jessica Chastain, who rises above the film's flaws to deliver a really memorable portrayal that will stay with viewers long after the details of the film itself fade from memory. For Chastain if for no other reason Jolene is Recommended.
1988
2008
1979
Limited Edition to 3000 - SOLD OUT
1959
Love and Other Impossible Pursuits
2009
1953
2008
1932
2009
Limited Edition
2008
2011
2011
2007
2015
1947
2011
1940
1984
1984
Coco avant Chanel
2009