This film has a lot of swell ingredients but it was left on the stove for a little too long and has become overcooked.
Writer/director Sian Heder has crafted a film about women, or more specifically about being a mother; the desire to be one, the difficulties, the loneliness, and what qualifies one to do it. It's sad and funny and recognisable all at once.
Elliot Page plays the eponymous Tallulah; a woman who has decided to opt out of society's responsibilities and restrictions and lives a life of petty crime from her van. Through a series of events and impulsive decisions, Tallulah ends up kidnapping a baby and shows up at the door of her ex-boyfriend's Mom, Margo (Alison Janney) claiming the baby is Margo's grandchild.
After all that first act running around set-up, Tallulah settles in to observe the three women impacted by this; Tallulah, Margo, and Carolyn, the biological mother played by Tammy Blanchard (last seen by me to chilling effect in "The Invitation").
All three women are coping with their sudden, unexpected new maternal situation; grand/motherhood, or it's wished-for absence. This is fertile (no pun intended) ground, and it's a shame the movie doesn't have the confidence to sit with the significance of these unintended consequences for these three women - too much time is spent on the busy-work of investigation, dodging police, and worst of all, the possibility of romance.
The film recognises the situation it has put these women in, but instead of reckoning with how they respond, it gives them suspicious detectives, and amorous doormen to spar with. But the meat of the matter is not in how others now see them, but in how they see themselves.
One particularly silly sequence has Tallulah turn manic pixie dream girl and teach Margo something by encouraging her to mess up the expensive paintings in her apartment she doesn't even like. It's all so superficial.
Luckily, the material is elevated by three brilliant actresses committing to their characters. Page and Janney (in their third collaboration following "Juno" and "Touchy Feely") are wonderful. Page brings a believable burgeoning maturity as she realises she may actually be up for this mothering thing after all. Janney excels at portraying someone closed off, and almost against her wishes, is allowing herself to open up again.
The real MVP though is Blanchard as the drunk who suddenly finds she desperately wants her child back. She takes us from potentially depressed new mother using alcohol to cope, to a woman seeing herself through others eyes for the first time in a long time and not liking what she is seeing.
You might come for Page and Janney but it is Blanchard you stay for, and I regretted the small amount of screen time the three had together.
The film is smart enough not to judge it's characters - they may do despicable things but the script always offers us some insight into why they did them.
If it sometimes indulges that desire a little too much (better to hint at or show problematic home lives than to give characters monologues where they spell it out), it's also wise enough to not hand us pat answers by the end. We have a fair idea of where things might go, but issues are by no means resolved, and that was the right place to leave it.
The final scene is so gratingly on-the-nose though that it almost ruined the whole thing for me, but I recalled the penultimate scene and felt connected to these strong but struggling women once again.
