American Woman

It's 1974 before Nixon's resignation. Iris (Hong Chau) is a caretaker for Miss Dolly (Ellen Burstyn) in upstate New York. In reality, Iris is Jenny, a political activist and bomb maker in hiding. She gets tracked down by a former comrade who has an offer for her. He needs help caring for wanted celebrity activist Pauline (Sarah Gadon) as a heiress Patty Hearst-like character. There is also the self-important leader Juan (John Gallagher Jr.) and his girlfriend Yvonne (Lola Kirke) at the safe house.

It's a lot of sunshine in upstate New York. The tone is foreboding without tension. It has a moodiness but it's going nowhere fast. It needs more music to build up the era. It feels like it's trying to be a psychological horror. There is potential for a thriller. Juan is not threatening enough. Jenny seems so resourceful that she could walk away at any time. The question is if she is doing it for Pauline, it would be more intense if she is in love with Pauline. I would write Jenny as a lesbian falling for Pauline. The story needs to tie Jenny down to the place and ratchet up the intensity for a psychological horror. They need to stay in the farm house. Going back to Miss Dolly does have one advantage. It brings Ellen Burstyn back into play but that fleeting scene is not enough. The movie struggles to get intense and stay there. Then it turns into Thelma & Louise. It's flailing at this point and it's a road trip with no destination. That's this movie. It's a story with no intensity. These are intriguing characters with no payoff. There are some interesting actors but they're held back. It's a movie in need of a heavier hand.

I don't know the historical context or events around the film, but I thought it was intriguing and interesting.

Leave it to Hollywood to consider the average American movie goer to be under the age of 45. This would allow for the artistic license applied to this uninspired drivel. Artistic license being Hollywood speak meaning made up garbage based on lies! A great many of us remember the Patty Hearst story quite well as it was nowhere near "confounding" as one reviewer put it. She was not a "billionaire daughter", she an heiress to a millionaire newspaper owner. Another reviewer said that she was "non-violent", and yet all of us who were alive at the time remember her picture on the front page of those very same newspapers, of her holding a machine gun. This movie is nothing more than a fictional drama alluding to a connection to Patty in order to garner the attention required to separate the millennial's from their money. Save your money and read all about the real story via the myriad of on-line college libraries.

1974, post flower power America was rocked by the confounding, headline hogging tale of billionaire daughter turned radical revolutionary Patty Hearst. Her Che Guevera pose in front of the Symbionese Liberation Flag, totally rocking a chic beret, army fatigues and machine gun, became the poster of choice for anti fascist revolutionaries. The evocative, is she or isn't she? Stockholm syndrome question death gripped an ogling Nation.

Great story, perfect movie fodder, except here it merely serves as a background of events for an equally complex character, that of Wendy Yoshimura, herself a committed (non-violent) revolutionary, Patty babysitter, and as it turns out a future water colour artist.

Sure sure, the names have been changed - to Jenny and Pauline, but this fictionalized herstory follows actual events quite closely. Focusing on a rational, dedicated and idealistic member of an inflammatory group speeding towards the flame, Jenny is as intriguing a character as the confused ex-debutante. A child of war internment camps, relegated to stereotypical servant duties that American Asians suffered through, an expert bomber, and regularly dismissed as gender inferior by chest-inflating men, Jenny is a stoic tower of strength and methodically fights through some crazy crap to get things done.

Shot in seventies California browns, and acted to pinpoint perfection by Hong Chau (Ellen Burstyn is also divine), "American Woman" captures the pulse (sometimes racing, sometimes not) of an exhilarating and convoluted time when everything seemed to be on the table, by glimpsing the frustrations, hardships, and drudgery, among the idealism clashes of off the grid non-citizens.

Less focused on gunplay and the sensationalized rebel life, "American Woman" deals with the inner conflicts of a diverse group on the verge of combustion, creating a quiet sense of tension in their daily, on the lam life. Viewers expecting bombast, cookie cutter action and punchy plot, will be disappointed. This is a nuance film. A slow burn. A thinker. A mood piece. And probably closer to the truth than most people would hope for.

• hipCRANK