You need to keep a keen eye on Patricia Clarkson. Shes a sorceress of an actress who makes wicked magic, be it on TV (Six Feet Under) or stage (A Streetcar Named Desire) and in movies from High Art and Far From Heaven to Pieces of April, The Station Agent and Vicky Cristina Barcelona. Clarkson is at her brilliant best in Phoebe in Wonderland. And that is saying something. She plays Miss Dodger, a drama teacher who seems to have dropped out of Alice in Wonderland. Its only appropriate, since Miss Dodger is directing a class of preteens in a school production of Lewis Carrolls rule-breaking allegory. Jump, she tells those students who audition timidly for roles. Miss Dodger likes to leap into the wild blue. She must have learned it from Clarkson.
Writer-director Daniel Barnz focuses the movie his first, and its a beauty on the student who just might be Miss Dodgers match. Her name is Phoebe Lichten, and shes played by Elle Fanning, Dakotas younger sister, with astonishing ferocity and feeling. Phoebe is nine years old. She lives at home with workaholic writer parents, and though they try to ignore her behavioral issues, Phoebe has them. She spits, curses, washes her hands till they turn raw and bleed. Mom Hillary (Felicity Huffman), whos writing a scholarly book on Alice, sees (or wants to see) Phoebes problems as natural childhood rebellion. Dad Peter (Bill Pullman) is less patient. And Principal Davis (a wonderfully frazzled Campbell Scott) isnt patient at all.
Miss Dodger, who sees herself in Phoebe, gives her the role of Alice. And the creative spark that ignites between them also ignites this mesmerizer of a movie. Huffman and Pullman excel in their roles, but the real world cant begin to match the imaginary one conjured up by student and teacher. Barnz hints at the disorder (Tourette syndrome) that plagues Phoebe. Admirably, he never stoops to trite disease-of-the-week TV drama. Let Clarkson and Fanning take you to the rabbit hole of seductive enchantment that defines this movie. And dont ask what to do jump.
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