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Welcome
to the Dollhouse
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Teenage humiliation is unquestionably one of the great subjects of popular art, from J. D. Salinger's classic novel The Catcher in the Rye to Brian De Palma's horror movie Carrie (1976). Welcome to the Dollhouse's Dawn (Heather Matarazzo) is an eleven-year-old that Fassbinder might have dreamt up: every piece of oppressive abuse that she suffers, she instantly inflicts on someone even less empowered. Dawn has it bad in every department of her life. At school she is shunned, ridiculed and branded a lesbo. At home she is ignored by her parents in favour of her sickly-sweet little sister Missy (Daria Kalinina). In love, she shuttles between a handsome older guy who hardly notices her and a sullen, disturbed classmate who regularly threatens her with rape. Advance word from overseas on Welcome to the Dollhouse overstressed its supposedly dark and fantastical qualities. While it occasionally borders on black comedy, the film is far from being authentically bleak or nightmarish. Writer-director Todd Solondz attempts to blend three distinct storytelling modes, and the mix is often rather uncertain. The most successful level of the film is its low-key naturalism: the stilted exchanges between people, their silences, misunderstandings, pained implosions of feeling. Threaded through this portrait are more generic aspects of the contemporary teen movie: certain stock characters, situations and clichés that nudge the film, but not nearly far enough, into Heathers (1989) territory. Solondz then pours on top of this combo of naturalism and genre a thick layer of suburban kitsch and brittle nasty comedy. Here the film's closest neighbour is Love Serenade (1996), but at least Dawn's gloomy story has enough diverse threads and interesting side characters to maintain its momentum. A certain artlessness infects many recent American films of an independent persuasion – dull rhythms, inert staging, unimaginative use of music and sound. Welcome to the Dollhouse suffers from such sloppy inattention to style; for the most part, the film's only energy and charm derives from its cast. The young actors are especially good. Matarazzo's personality and skill shine through all the bad clothes, hairstyles and fashion accessories that exaggeratedly identify her character as a geek. Matthew Faber, playing Dawn's older, computer-nerd brother, superbly captures the adolescent mixture of insensitivity and earnestness. There are intriguing, funny and painfully truthful elements in Welcome to the Dollhouse. But it is not half the film it could have been. MORE Solondz: Happiness, Storytelling © Adrian Martin December 1996 |
