White Oleander

SYNOPSIS

It would have been easy to rework Janet Fitch's bestseller - a teenager is fostered out after her artist mother is jailed for murdering her lover - as a stellar TV movie, particularly as director Peter Kosminsky has some pedigree on the small screen with such recent offerings as The Project and The Government Inspector. But he rejects the melodrama-by-numbers option and uses attention-grabbing imagery to convey much of the confusion Alison Lohman feels after Michelle Pfeiffer's arrest. Moreover, his assured grasp of structure and pacing, and some accomplished acting, ensure that we only gradually come to appreciate the shifting nature of their relationship, as Lohman learns to think for herself while living with Robin Wright Penn's trailer-park Christian, Renée Zellweger's touchingly tragic actress and Svetlana Efremova's wily hustler.