Evergreen

Addie Land captures the moments in the life of a teenage girl faced with the disparity between the realities her own family faces as working poor and the middle class prosperity of her peers. She is positioned to make decisions about what she is willing to put on the line to better her circumstances--her family--her virginity--her identity. Finally, a movie for young women with some depth. Addie plays the role of the girl, Henri, and she just adds a freshness to the film--she is a natural on screen. The film is set in the northwest--it has style. I saw the film at Sundance this year but understand it may be coming out to theaters soon. Try to check it out.

I saw "Evergreen" at the Seattle International Film Festival in May. I especially recommend this movie to teens. They will relate to the mother/daughter relationship in this movie. I understand this is the first movie the lead actor, Addie Land, has been in. Her acting was wonderful and made the movie more special.

Addie's performance reminded me of Ashley Judd in "Ruby in Paradise". I hope we see more of her in the future. Great talent! BL SE

Noah Fleiss ("Brick", "Things You Can Tell Just By Looking at Her") certainly saved this movie from total oblivion. Unfortunately, the movie was based on the believability of Henri (Addie Land) as a girl from a low-income family wanting a change, and the believability wasn't there. Henri seemed more like an affluent California girl pretending to be from a poor family, which was not what the director intended nor what we wanted to see. Chat (Fleiss), however, was supposed to provide us with a picture of a shallow affluent teen male, a living cliché, and that is precisely what we got -- effective and, in the final analysis, humorously absurd. Fleiss dependably surprises with the convincing quality of his roles, and this one was so well done that I rather think there might be viewers who thought Fleiss himself was shallow.

Although the remainder of the movie has little to recommend it, go into it expecting only to see a gem of a performance by Noah Fleiss and you will in no way be disappointed.

This film attempts admirably to show the pain of adolescence, especially in a poor family. Unfortunately it lacks the quality of acting and direction to give it real impact. We are distracted by the fact that some of the characters at least don't seem real and the actors often don't seem to be "on the same page".

This viewer made the mistake of taking at face value a reviewer's rating of four stars - a reviewer I didn't even know! - and then being disappointed. My own fault!

Perhaps if I had entered the room with different expectations, or been given the realization that this movie was truly a first time effort or compromised somewhat by low budget I would have been able to be more charitable - and possibly derived more enjoyment from it. But alas the unknown reviewer gave it a glowing rating. Too bad.

At the Sundance screening of this film, the director told us that the "evergreen" of the title referred to the green envy the main character feels toward those who have so much while she does not. This was a realistic story of a young girl who moves into her grandmother's ramshakle house with her grandmother. They are quite poor, and when the girl (Henri) meets a rich boy at school, she wants to be part of his family. The movie is about Henri's discovery that money doesn't really take away problems. This was good effort for all involved.