Georgia in Idaho

A teenage Lindsay Lohan washes up in a small Idaho town where Jane Fonda aims to straighten her out in 2007's Georgia Rule. I found this movie to be unexpectedly, fascinatingly weird.

Wikipedia says Lohan's character, Rachel Wilcox, is "a promiscuous, heavy-drinking young woman, whose drug addiction, Lily's daughter and Georgia's granddaughter." Whose drug addiction what? Someone editing the page evidently didn't finish a thought. Anyway, she has no drug addiction in the film, she's just a bad girl in ways that aren't very well defined. Her mother, Lily (Felicity Huffman), drops her off on the road after the two fight on the way to the town. Rachel hitchhikes and is picked up by Dermot Mulroney whom she calls gay because he doesn't peep at her when she has her legs up on his dash and her dress hiked up. The film proceeds to find ways to make almost every interaction Rachel has with another character sexual in some way, including an impromptu wrestling fight with a twelve year old-ish neighbourhood kid whom she's disgusted to notice has an erection in the middle of their tussle. Jane Fonda throws cold water on the fight literally by hosing them down.

The movie is really sexy, usually in extremely awkward ways. Jane Fonda, famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) liberal in real life plays a conservative, religious woman here and she does a good job. But I sense her role was cut down substantially. She plays the Georgia of the title, Rachel's grandmother, and the title and setup made me think this was going to be a movie about her disciplining her wild daughter. However, after Rachel casually mentions to Dermot Mulroney that her stepfather, played by Cary Elwes, had sexually molested her, the whole movie becomes about whether or not she's telling the truth.

What a strange career Cary Elwes has had. Every time I think I've seen the last of him he pops up in some random role.

It really feels like screenwriter Mark Andrus had no idea how to write a small American town or a teenage girl or a religious grandmother. That's not necessarily a bad thing. When everyone's not being oddly sexy, they're being oddly erudite. Even the desk clerk at the veterinary office where Mulroney works is able to quote from Ezra Pound. Meanwhile, the extent of Georgia's religious fervour seems to be sticking a bar of soap into anyone's mouth who takes the Lord's name in vain.

I think the film got sidetracked due to some drama in Lohan's life, which would explain why it seems to start as one thing and becomes another. It is kind of a fascinating artefact, though. Set in Idaho, it was of course shot entirely in California. I was just disappointed it didn't have any Idaho potatoes.