Stories of Life
FILM: Getting to Know You
DIRECTOR: Lisanne Skyler
STARRING: Heather Matarazzo, Bebe Neuwirth
GRADE: B
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WHAT'S YOUR STORY? JIMMY (MICHAEL WESTON) TRIES TO CHAT UP A RELUCTANT JUDITH (HEATHER MATARAZZO) IN GETTING TO
KNOW YOU.
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They were the rage for a while when I was in college. Relay stories we called
them, and we most often composed them at parties. One person would write a
paragraph setting up a character or group of characters and a situation, and
then hand the manuscript off to a sequence of friends, each of whom would write
an additional paragraph advancing the narrative. I don't remember our ever
actually finishing anything, but we could have, I suppose. And had we, the
finished piece no doubt would have been pretty bad. Something akin to the relay
story happens in Lisanne Skyler's Getting to Know You, only the stories
we hear in this film are fueled by pain rather than the alcohol and sense of
frivolity that powered the ones I once helped compose.
Adapted from several short stories by Joyce Carol Oates, and
scripted by director Skyler and her sister Tristine Skyler, Getting to Know
You is the story of three teenagers: Judith McIntire (Heather Matarazzo),
who is still in high school; her brother, Wesley (Zach Braff), who is just
about to start his freshman year in college; and Wesley's former high-school
classmate Jimmy (Michael Weston). These three bright kids are all in trouble
due to situations involving their parents. The McIntire youngsters' mother,
Tricks (Bebe Neuwirth), is currently in a psychiatric home ranting about her
desire to murder both her estranged husband Darrell (Mark Blum) and
Judith.
Eventually, we learn that Tricks was hospitalized after enduring a
horrific beating at Darrell's hands. Tricks won't speak to her children when
they visit her; Darrell won't even accept their phone calls. The story is set
on the day that Judith's isolation is about to grow even greater, because
Wesley is just about to leave for college.
At the bus station, they run into the talkative Jimmy, whom neither
Judith nor Wesley remembers from school. Jimmy's on his way to New York, he
announces, where he plans to become a musician. Fairly quickly, Jimmy reveals
the nature of his own isolation: Motherless from a young age, he has now
recently lost his policeman father, who was shot to death while trying to
intervene in a domestic dispute. Wesley has long taken refuge from the
difficulties in his life by immersing himself in his studies. (The picture
doesn't quite account for what he's studying because school hasn't started.)
So, hiding from the discomfort of his looming separation from his sister, he
buries his nose in a book. And though all at once Wesley doesn't like this
fact, that leaves Judith and Jimmy free to talk. We don't realize this at
first, but they relate to each other by making up stories about the people they
see in the bus station. And through their stories, we learn critical things
about how each views the world.
Spying two twentysomething women in the station diner, Jimmy
relates a tale he claims to have overheard between them. The two recently made
a trip to Atlantic City, Jimmy says, where one was picked up by a high-rolling
Oklahoma gambler named Sonny (Christopher Noth). In a single heady night, Sonny
racked up winnings of nearly $100,000 at the craps table and subsequently
proposed before going on a monumental losing streak and disappearing into the
inky night, leaving the suddenly jilted young woman without so much as the
knowledge of his true name. Subsequently, Jimmy starts a story about another
young woman named Leila Lee (Mary McCormack), who the two teenagers overhear
saying that she can't have children. Jimmy imagines that shortly before Leila
Lee learned of her sterility, she married an older man. Leila Lee's husband,
Lamar (Leo Burmester), is a brute who terrorizes his teenaged son (Jacob
Reynolds). This is a story, obviously, with which Judith strongly identifies,
and when she doesn't like the end Jimmy concocts, she instead substitutes
one of her devising.
Jimmy's story about the girl and the gambler, and Judith's relay
leg about the woman with the abusive husband, are actually stories about the
narrators themselves. Jimmy believes that life's good fortune will never last,
and as a result, despite his bonhomie, he's become pessimistic to the point of
stasis. Like the studious Wesley, Jimmy also was a good student in high school.
He, too, was once college-bound this fall. In fact, when Jimmy's father died,
he was out purchasing a second-hand computer for Jimmy to take with him to
school. But all that good fortune, all that hope for a generational step up the
socioeconomic ladder, is dashed in the smoke of an angry man's gun. Now Jimmy
claims to be contemptuous of education and declares his plans to live the
bohemian life of the artist. But like the Sonny character in his imagination,
Jimmy is not honest even about his own identity.
Judith reveals herself similarly. The ending she devises for Leila
Lee's story reflects a pivotal episode in her own life and accounts for why
Tricks has threatened the life of her devoted daughter as well as that of her
faithless husband. The revelation that all this leads to is rather less than
its build-up would suggest. And as a result, the picture falls somewhere short
of essential viewing.
It remains worthy viewing, however. The acting is nicely
understated and affecting, Matarazzo demonstrating that her sensational debut
in Welcome to the Dollhouse was no fluke. I also applaud the execution
of Judith's relationship with her brother. Without resorting to any such
declarations, wisely allowing the teenagers to bristle about their sibling's
actions, the film nonetheless deftly establishes the depth of love brother and
sister feel for each other. In the end, the film touches our heart simply by
dramatizing a small act of forgiveness.
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