Director Arie Posin was born in Israel, his parents are from Russian, they moved to Canada, and eventually made their way to America when he was a teenager. Knowing what it's like to be an outsider, Posin set out to tell a story from the perspective of an alienated high schooler. Emphasizing the ever widening gap between teenagers and their parents, The Chumscrubber dissects suburbia to reveal a core that's not necessarily rotten, but one that's hollow after years of numbing fears instead of confronting them.
The film stars Jamie Bell (the lead in Billy Elliot) as Dean, a loner whose only friend, Troy Johnson, is the local prescription drug dealer at the high school. One afternoon, during a Johnson family party, Dean walks into Troy's guesthouse bedroom and finds him hanging from the rafters. Figuring none of the busybodies attending the party would care, including Troy's mom (Glenn Close), Dean tells nobody about the suicide and quietly slips away. Eventually the death is discovered, and school bully Billy (Justin Chatwin) wants to get his hands on Troy's remaining stash, which he believes Dean now has. Billy kidnaps Charley Bratley, son of a neighborhood police officer, mistaking him for Dean's younger brother, and holds him as ransom for the drugs.
From here, the plot thickens and becomes so muddled to the characters (but not the audience)that nobody believes Dean when he eventually attempts to tell the truth about what's happening with the drugs, kidnapping, and possible violent eruptions waiting around the corner if nothing is done to stop it. Unfortunately, the parents of these drug-crazed children are worse off than their offspring. For every pill being popped, there's an equal display of consumed booze. A glass of wine simply looks like the extension of a hand, as natural an appearance as a ring on a finger. Rita Wilson's character Terri Bratley (Terrible Brat) lives by the mantra, "I have a million things to do today," as she prepares for her upcoming wedding to a strangely water-obsessed Mayor Michael Ebbs (and flows?), played by Ralph Fiennes. She's so self-absorbed that she's completely unaware that her son has been missing for two days. In weak attempts to discover his whereabouts, Mrs. Bratley is easily satisfied with the drunken response of acquaintance Jerri Falls (Carrie-Anne Moss) that the kids, including her daughter Crystal, an accomplice in the kidnapping, are out having fun.
The parents are literally unbelievable. Despite fine performances from the stellar cast who play them, the adult characters appear too plastic, frantic, unobservant, and running around helter skelter to even keep tabs on their childrens' whereabouts. In the 21st Century, it's a foregone conclusion that parents are maxed-out from the stress of work, marital problems, finances, and the burden of perfectly placid suburban appearances, but such a display of absent parenting on a single cul-de-sac was asking too much from the audience, even as we wanted to suspend our disbelief for the sake of a great message. However, with names like Bratley, Falls, Ebbs, and Stiffle, it's difficult to argue that the parents are anything more than symbols who represent what their children will become if they continute down their current path of deceit and drug abuse.
In a wonderfully suppressed performance by Allison Janney as Mrs. Stiffle, we find a woman who is emotionally withdrawn, rigid, and more than lives up to her name. In a poignant scene with Dean in their backyard, Mrs. Stiffle confesses, "Sometimes I wish you were the parent and I was the kid, and I could do what you say and I would trust you." As she raises the wine glass to her lips in quiet contemplation, Janney's performance glides from sad, drunk, and vulnerable, to hopeful triumph, much like a gambler who has lost most of her winnings but has enough for one last throw of the dice. An equally powerful scene occurs late in the film where Glenn Close shows why she's still one of the tops in the game.
Along with these powerful moments of emotive acting, Posin has a keen knack for cutting back and forth between scenes that are boldy dramatic and comic. He even takes a scene of grotesque fright and ends it in hilarity without ever losing the impact of his message. The shooting of the film also adds to its depth. The facade of superficiality and our inability to communicate is mocked with every sunny sky and illuminated pastel home interior. Even the mountains surrounding Hillside Community and its "Carefree Living" loom threateningly close to the houses, as if ready to topple and destroy the green, manicured lawns and bountiful flowerbeds. With a mere $5 million, Posin has corraled a superb cast and crafted a film with production values vastly exceeding its modest budget.
In a world of self-medication and poor interpersonal communication between parents and teenagers, Arie Posin has directed the Rebel Without a Cause for the current young generation. For his first full-length feature film, Posin's vision feels fully realized. With more efforts like The Chumscrubber, he won't be the alienated outsider for much longer.
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