Jolene (2008)

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Movie
Original title Jolene
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2008
length 121 minutes
Age rating FSK k. A.
Rod
Director Dan Ireland
script Dennis Yares
production Zachary Matz ,
Riva Yares
music Harry Gregson-Williams
camera Claudio Rocha
cut Luis Colina
occupation

Jolene is an American feature film by director Dan Ireland from the year 2008 with Jessica Chastain in the title role. Its plot is based on EL Doctorow's 2002 short story Jolene: A Life , which in turn was inspired by Dolly Parton's 1973 song Jolene .

action

The fifteen-year-old orphan Jolene marries the inexperienced eccentric Mickey to escape the abuse of her foster family. After the wedding, the teenage couple lives in the house of Mickey's uncle Phil. His wife Kay has a strong dislike for Jolene and lets her feel it. On her sixteenth birthday Jolene begins a secret affair with the much older Phil. When Kay, the two red-handed caught, she throws Jolene violently out of the house. Mickey cannot cope with adultery and jumps off a bridge to his death. Phil is sentenced to several months' imprisonment for fornication with a minor and Jolene is admitted to a psychiatric institution for young people.

In psychiatry, Jolene discovered her artistic talent while drawing and entered into a sexual relationship with the lesbian prison guard Cindy. With their help, Jolene manages to escape from the institution. After a short time, however, Jolene also flees from Cindy, whose feelings for the girl are not based on mutuality. Jolene boards a bus heading west from South Carolina . In order to make money, she first engages in prostitution before taking a job as a waitress on roller skates in a Dairy Queen restaurant in Phoenix . There she meets the musician and tattoo artist Coco Leger. The two become a couple and Jolene starts working as a tattoo artist in Coco's studio. Although she hardly knows anything about him, she accepts his proposal. Soon after, Jolene finds out that Coco is not only addicted to cocaine and finances his addiction by selling drugs, but also that Coco is already married to another woman, Marin, and has a son. Jolene furiously devastates Coco's shop, spills his cocaine, steals money and calls the police before she runs away.

Jolene ends up in Las Vegas , where she works as an erotic dancer and meets the mobster Sal Fontaine. She moves into his luxury apartment, gives up her job as a dancer and devotes herself to her art. One day Sal is murdered by gangsters and Jolene escapes by bus to Tulsa , where she works as a receptionist and party waitress. At one of these parties she meets the rich, eccentric and devout Brad Benton, marries him and becomes pregnant. When Brad learns of Jolene's past, he beats her up. Jolene escapes with her baby in a women's shelter . Brad's influential family charges her with child abduction and she is arrested. Brad is given sole custody of their child due to his wife's troubled past. From now on, Jolene is only allowed to see her son every other Sunday and under supervision. She realizes that the rare encounters do her child more harm than good for him, and so she decides to get out of his life altogether.

Jolene is now 25 and works as a comic artist in Los Angeles . She dreams of one day being a movie star and returning to Tulsa in a stretch limo, where her son falls around his famous mother's neck.

background

The American writer and publicist EL Doctorow wrote the short story Jolene: A Life , inspired by Dolly Parton's song Jolene . It is about a young woman in trouble and was first published in The New Yorker magazine in 2002 . Two years later, the tale appeared with four other stories in his volume Sweet Land Stories .

Filming took place in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and various locations in Arizona , Oklahoma and South Carolina.

The film premiered on June 13, 2008 at the Seattle International Film Festival , where Jessica Chastain received the Golden Space Needle Award for Best Actress. On October 29, 2010, Jolene ran in US cinemas. The film has not yet been released in German-speaking countries (as of April 2015).

Jessica Chastain made her big screen debut in the film. Chastain was given the role of Jolene, who was only fifteen at the beginning of the film, although - in real life, born in 1977 - was already more than twice her age at the time of filming.

reception

Jolene received mixed reviews. At Rotten Tomatoes , 50% of the total of 20 reviews are positive; the average rating is 4.9 / 10. At Metacritic , the film got a rating of 31/100 based on 10 reviews.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dolly Did It First New York Press, accessed April 18, 2015.