Movie Review: Junebug

A newly-married woman meets her in-laws for the first time in Phil Morrison's Junebug, and the result is not a chain of “Focker” jokes but a serious look at characters who are a little too quirky to be normal and a little too normal to not be true. Culture clash, class conflict, religion, and the definition of art lurk beneath the surface.

Talk About Nothing

At least two characters in Junebug have problems with communication. George's father Eugene has turned into a man who seldom opens his mouth and spends most of his time woodworking in the basement, and George's brother Johnny has become a simmering, angry young man. It's significant that both are the products of marriages to strong-willed, talkative, demanding women. However, there is also an important difference: although he doesn't say much, Eugene still communicates with his wife in non-verbal ways (for example, he makes her a wooden bird to replace the one Madeleine breaks at the beginning of the film) while the only communication Johnny is capable of is verbal and physical violence (he yells at his pregnant wife Ashley after he's unable to force the VCR to record a show about her favorite animal, the meerkat; and he hits George with a wrench rather than engage in any sort of brother-to-brother conversation that could perhaps resolve their unknown but evident tensions). Eugene is not a talker, but he is a communicator; Johnny is neither.

Furthermore, Ashley's complacent claims that Johnny is merely in a “phase” are proved false, and the film makes it clear that she craves communication with her husband. An extremely avid talker who attacks Madeleine with questions the minute she arrives, Ashley simply cannot exist without talking—it's not a want, but a need of hers. In one particularly poignant scene, she actually “gets off” on conversation: lying in bed with a picture of Johnny in one hand, she masturbates with the other to the sound of Johnny and Madeleine having a sort-of-conversation about The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It's the only time that the film shows anything sexual happening in Johnny and Ashley's bed; all other shots of the bed are cold, un-erotic.

Post-colonialist: “Junebug Hates Black People”

There's a fascinating detail in Junebug that I've noticed in several other recent films as well; however, none have been as blatant and well-structured as this one.

Mere minutes after she meets her new family, Madeleine — who is British, the nation most synonymous with “empire” — is asked about where she's from. She explains that she was born in Japan, moved to Africa with her diplomat-father, and now lives in Chicago. As innocent as the answer seems, there's an interesting undercurrent: Africa, Japan, Chicago; Continent, Country, City; Black, Yellow, White.

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