The white oleander is a flower, beautiful but deadly.
In this brooding coming-of-age story by British director Peter Kosminsky - adapted from the novel by Janet Fitch - the white oleander is embodied by Ingrid Magnusson (Michelle Pfeiffer), whose love proves toxic for her teenage daughter Astrid (Alison Lohman).
After Ingrid is arrested for murdering her philandering boyfriend (Billy Connolly), Astrid is pinballed into the California care system.
Bouncing from one foster home to another, she falters in efforts to step out of her mother's shadow. Having been drip-fed poisonous pearls like "Love humiliates you. Hatred cradles you", and instructed in the art of manipulation with idioms including, "Our beauty is our power," Astrid is sceptical of any chance at happiness.
Later, emotional stumbling blocks come in the form of Robin Wright Penn, Ren茅e Zellweger and Svetlana Efremova - a frightening ID parade of self-serving foster parents. They provide just a hint of the brutal inattention perpetrated by the social services, a matter which Kosminsky never probes deeply enough.
For the most part he shows good taste, keeping a measured distance from his subject with wobbly-cam realism (although letting the boom drop into shot may be taking it a bit too far). In giving Lohman so much space, he demonstrates great faith in her ability to keep the blood pumping through an otherwise cold chronicle. And rightfully so.
In amongst a glittering cast, it's Lohman who raises the stakes, keeping this adaptation from sinking into a lather. At all times you sense the deep wound beneath the hardened scab of Astrid's exterior, giving her story a grand, heroic scale.
Eventually "White Oleander" comes into bloom with a life-affirming climax, but the tidy resolution of Astrid and Ingrid's relationship feels impossibly romanticised. Even so, this ode to a poisonous flower is effective medicine for the nausea usually induced by Hollywood's efforts to cater to the white whine and Kleenex crowd.
White Oleander (2003)
