Welcome to the Rileys - Reviews [Sundance 2010]

Sundance Review: Kristen Stewart's 'Welcome To The Rileys'

Kristen Stewart is utterly fearless in "Welcome to the Rileys." That's the takeaway from the film's world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on Saturday afternoon. You can quibble all you want with her portrayal of a 16-year-old runaway turned stripper and prostitute. But you cannot walk away from a viewing and say the actress doesn't fearlessly expose herself physically and emotionally, and doesn't do so with astonishing maturity and believability.

Working the lap dance rooms and seedy motels of New Orleans, Stewart's character (real name Allison, working girl name Mallory and many others) is a damaged runaway with a filthy mouth and an even filthier idea of how to make money. There is little sexy about this teen, as she's prayed on by faceless men; the camera catches every pimple, every dark circle under her eye, every strand of stringy hair that has seen far too much strip club cigarette smoke and not enough shampoo (and no, she does not once get naked). Her life is going nowhere until a plumbing supply salesman named Doug Reily (James Gandolfini) shows up and takes Allison under his wing.

Doug, too, is a runaway, fleeing a home life that has collapsed after his 15-year-old daughter's death, a trauma that has left his wife Lois (Melissa Leo) an anxiety-ridden shut-in. He cleans Allison up, refuses her sexual advances, and what develops between the two is a dysfunctional but sweet father/daughter relationship.

What to make of Gandolfini? On the one hand, his Doug presents an enrapturing mix of grizzly bear and puppy dog, a shell of a man struggling with unspeakable loss and fighting to find a reason to rise each morning. On that other hand, he tries on—and just as easily drops—a terrible southern accent, depending on the scene. The result is a frustrating hodgepodge of a performance that had so much potential to be great.

Melissa Leo, meanwhile, is nothing short of spectacular. With one expression—a shifting of the eyes, a downturn of the lips—the actress can communicate exactly what Lois is feeling, and what's more, she can make the audience empathize with her. Leo's lines are alternately funny and heartbreaking, and you root for her as such overcomes incapacitating anxiety to join Doug in New Orleans and find in Allison the daughter they once lost. It becomes clear they're all damaged, and they all need each other.

The film, no doubt, has its share of flaws, from intermittent pacing issues to frequent disruptive arguments that seem to arise from storytelling requirements rather than the relationships and developments between characters. But the script thankfully avoids the clichés and storybook ending to which lesser films might have given in.

In 'Rileys,' Twilighters will find nothing so much to be shocked by, rather than the fulfillment of a promise Stewart has been hinting at since 2002's "Panic Room": the woman is a fine, fine actress.

Welcome to the Rileys -- Film Review

Bottom Line: An oft-told tale gets brightened by three fine performances.

PARK CITY — In his second feature, “Welcome to the Rileys,” longtime commercial and music video director Jake Scott takes on the more than trite, if not completely tattered, tale of the prostitute and the man who wants to save her. Oh, there’s a twist on that theme to be sure, but such a story is never going to work on a realistic level.

Scott gets nice performances though from a cast that is a virtual three-hander — James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo and Kristen Stewart.

Despite its selection in Sundance’s Dramatic Competition, where one expects experimental and edgy works, the film feels old-fashioned and somewhat removed from contemporary indie filmmaking. “The Twilight Saga’s” Stewart should deliver a curious audience — and she certainly satisfies that curiosity — yet no one should anticipate much theatrical business. The movie will gain better traction in VOD and DVD.

That twist on the old theme positions Gandolfini and Leo’s Doug and Lois Riley as a Midwestern couple drifting aimlessly through life since the death of a beloved teenage daughter. He maintains a plumbing supply business and brightens his week with card games and an affair with an obliging waitress. For her part, Lois has developed agoraphobia so she never leaves the house.

At a convention in New Orleans, Doug encounters a teenage stripper and hooker, Mallory (Stewart). Without knowing why exactly, he becomes a tenant in her rat’s nest of a house and sets about fixing the place, getting her proper bedding and subtly trying to rehabilitate her. Of course, the audience knows exactly why he has adopted a troubled girl the age of his dead daughter.

When her husband refuses to return home without explanation, Lois summons her courage and vanquishes her mental devils to the point she is able first to venture into the car, then back it out of the driveway and finally drive it to New Orleans. There she confronts the tenuous situation between her husband and a not-always grateful hooker. She gets the situation immediately though and pretty much takes over the mother role with near disastrous results.

Buying any of this? It’s all a little too obvious and simultaneously implausible, but Ken Hixon’s screenplay does serves as a blueprint for three fine performances. Galdofini plays utter misery and then utter optimistic conviction with ease. His attempted rehab of Mallory has a sweet poignancy that almost sweeps away the clichés.

Stewart’s Mallory is something the cat dragged in, a person of little self-worth who is determined to lose even what little she does have. She can barely relate to an adult other than with her sexuality — or more accurately, her sexual availability. Anger and self-hatred propels her body through each day.

Leo’s bereaved woman already has one foot in the grave — she has even ordered gravestones for herself and Doug — but New Orleans gives back her life. She has conquered her fears but she needs to conquer her guilt over her daughter’s death.

Marc Streitenfeld’s score with a slight jazz influence and Christopher Soos’ close-up camerawork within a de-glamorized New Orleans are major pluses. But the movie never overcomes the triteness of its premise.

Production companies: Scott Free Productions/Argonaut Pictures
Cast: James Gandolfini, Kristen Stewart, Melissa Leo, Joe Chrest, Ally Sheedy, Tiffany Coty, Elsa Davis
Director: Jake Scott
Screenwriter: Ken Hixon
Producers: Michael Costigan, Giovanni Agnelli, Scott Bloom
Executive producers: Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Steve Zaillian, Ken Hixon
Director of photography: Christopher Soos
Production designer: Happy Massee
Music: Marc Streitenfeld
Costume designer: Kim Bowen
Editor: Nicolas Gaster
Sales: UTA
No rating, 110 minutes

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