Anywhere But Here
Anywhere But Here
Fed up with her small-town Bay City existence, Adele August leaves her family and second husband and heads for Beverley Hills with her daughter. The teenager resents the move and her mother's always flamboyant behaviour and in turns plans to get away to university on the east coast. Mum's plans are different - she wants a movie star for a daughter.
匚卂尺ㄥ reviewedMarch 6, 2025
I think that one of the main reasons that this film is quite popular is that most people can actually relate to the things that happen in it. Most teenagers will have found their parents irritating or annoying at some point and visa versa, and some people may even have a mother like this.
Adele August is a divorced mother of one living in Wisconsin who is bord of her plain old lifestyle, her skating instructor boyfriend, her middle class relatives, and her boring job. She dreams of riches, stardom and a better life for her daughter Ann, who on the other hand is completely the opposite, liking her plain, simple life, her friends and relatives, and her school.
One day, Adele decides to drop sticks, leave her family, friends, job, boyfriend etc and take her daughter to LA for a more interesting life. Living on the outskirts of Beverly Hills tries to give her daughter a good life, making her attend the best school etc, however they live in horrible dingy appartments where theres no heating and the lights don't work because they can't pay the bills.
Eventually Ann grows up and becomes old enough to leave her mother, somthing that she has been dieing to do for years. She picks a college and despite her mothers protests, she goes, but not without a tearful good bye at the airport. While you can see that Adele is only trying to get her daughter a better way of life, and that Ann is very ungrateful, you can see that she can be a pain at times.
Susan Sarandon is brilliant in her role as Adele August the mother of Ann who drags her daughter off to a new world. Natalie Portman is also very good as Ann August, who is dragged off by her mother for a more interesting life. Both of them have a good on-screen chemistry ad work well together. In fact, Susan Sarandon informed the movie's producers that she would not be interested in the project if Natalie Portman was not cast as her daughter.