B

You could say that Matt Williams’ filmization of Billie Letts’
best-selling novel is cloying, manipulative, and schmaltzy, and
that, in terms of construction, it’s awfully rambling and
episodic; and you’d be absolutely right. But you could also
say that it’s endearingly off-kilter and charming in spite of
its calculation, and that while it’s chronologically messy it’s
surprisingly funny and warmhearted; and, once again, you’d be
correct. “Where the Heart Is” has lots of flaws that can be
easily catalogued, but it also works in the same way that
“Terms of Endearment” and “Steel Magnolias” did, and there
should be a substantial segment of the audience out there who
will embrace it if given half a chance.

The picture is basically a celebration of female fortitude
centering on a colorful group of southern women who support one
another through thick and thin. The focus is 17-year old
Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman), a sweet, pregnant young thing
who’s abandoned by her turkey of a boyfriend at a Wal-Mart in
tiny Sequoia, Oklahoma and surreptitiously stays in the store,
where, one stormy night, she delivers her child and becomes a
celebrity in the process. She’s virtually adopted by straight-
talking, lovable curmudgeon Sister Husband (Stockard Channing)
and wisecracking, man-crazy nurse Lexie (Ashley Judd) while
becoming an object of affection for one of the town’s oddballs,
well-read but nerdy Forney (James Frain), who lives in the
library and has a family secret upstairs. The script traces
Novalee’s life over the course of nearly a decade, and we watch
her transformation from a shy, retiring, utterly dependent
adolescent to a self-confident and creative woman.

Meanwhile the picture periodically detours to recount the
mirror-image fate of her dim-bulb beau Willy Jack (Dylan Bruno),
who, after a stint in the pokey, becomes a country-western
singer under the tutelage of hard-as-nails impresario Ruth
Meyers (Joan Cusack) but eventually hits the skids. Not
unexpectedly, the plot requires Novalee and Willy Jack to
face one another again before everything’s over.

“Where the Heart Is” ambles along for more than two hours,
providing lots of genial downhome humor punctuated by
obligatorily tearful scenes of sentiment and an occasional
sequence of wrenching tragedy; births, celebrations, romantic
encounters and moments of calculated uplift alternate with
deaths, incidents of brutality and loss, and intimations of
unrequited affection. It’s all supposed to represent part
of the Rich Pageant of Life, if you will, seen from a distinctly
female perspective, and while there’s a certain sitcom feel to
the proceedings, it seems richer and truer than most pictures
of similar ilk.

That’s not only because of the good dialogue provided by
scripters Ganz and Mandel, who give great throwaway bits to
almost every major cast member, but as a result of the lead
performances. Portman is absolutely luminous as Novalee;
there is no finer young actress working today. Judd is
marvelously down-to-earth as her buddy, and the script gives
her a powerfully dramatic moment as well, which she milks for
all it’s worth. Channing, who’s periodically given a role
worthy of her (the last was in “Six Degrees of Separation”)
scores heavily. And Cusack has a field deal playing a bitchy
businesswoman. It’s rare for a movie nowadays to provide so
many opportunities to actresses; and those who have been cast
here take every advantage of them. Even Sally Field shows
up momentarily as the heroine’s grasping mother, and after
you see her, you really won’t like her anymore.

The men are no slouches, either. James Frain is surprisingly
affecting as Novalee’s hesitant suitor, and Bruno makes a
splendid dunce as the wayward father of her child. Richard
Jones, Keith David, TJ McFarland and Bob Coonrad make striking
impressions in smaller roles.

There’s no denying that “Where the Heart Is” is a very
contrived, often overly cutesy piece of work, and it can be
criticized for not dealing very successfully with the passage
of time in the plot (occasionally we’re moved abruptly two or
three years further down the line, with rather disconcerting
effect). But if you’re willing to surrender to its folksily
feminist point of view and accept its manipulation gracefully,
you’ll probably find it a pleasant and even comforting, if
hardly credible, experience. And it will certainly succeed in
eliciting as many sniffles from the audience as its characters
engage in onscreen.

C-

“Precious” is the word that best describes Lisa Krueger’s
sophomore feature, a terminally cute bit of feminist whimsy
about a driven young New York City woman (Heather Graham) who
trails her wayward husband (Luke Wilson) to El Paso, where
he’s fled to search for “space.” There she develops an unusual
friendship with her hubby’s new inamorata, a beautiful Mexican-
American waitress (Patricia Velasquez), and the girl’s amiably
mystical grandfather (Alfonso Arau), and eventually learns the
self-confidence she needs when her spouse resists her attempts
to reconnect.

The film wants to be a kind of comic reverie on modern notions
of interpersonal commitment, questioning how far today’s
society will allow one to go in being true to the pledges of
permanency made in marriage. That’s actually an admirable
artistic aim, but “Committed” fails to realize its ambitions.
The main difficulty is that as written the lead couple is so
dippy and thick-witted that they soon cease to have any
resemblance to reality; their quirkiness is so calculated
that it quickly degenerates into heavy-handed affectation, and
they become oddball caricatures to whom an audience can’t
truly relate in any honest way. When the heroine winds up in
a mental institute because of her obsession with reuniting
with her reluctant husband, therefore, it seems a crude
tragicomic contrivance rather than the sharply ironic
observation it’s clearly intended to be.

If the central duo is more off-putting than intriguing, however,
the supporting characters provide some consolation. Casey
Affleck gives a warm, ingratiatingly laid-back performance as
Graham’s brother, who follows her to the southwest and
eventually links up with Velasquez. The latter is an attractive
new screen presence, both alluring and funny. And Arau manages
to retain his considerable dignity in a role that could easily
have become sheer shtick.

As for Krueger, her debut feature “Manny and Lo” showed that
she’s got a real ear for dialogue and a director’s eye. Very
few people escape the sophomore jinx, however, and she hasn’t
managed to do so. One can only hope that her next effort will
be a return to earlier form.