I lived for four years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a thousand years from the Taos homestead occupied by Arlene (Joan Allen) and Charley (Sam Elliott). They live in a big rundown house without a bathroom. They grow and kill their own food. They go to the dump for stuff (the dump we used to dispose of our garbage?) It might be idyllic except Charley is suffering from catatonic depression. He refuses to talk to Arlene, his best friend George (J.K. Simmons) or his daughter Bo (Valentina d’Angelis). Charley has one main activity. He drinks buckets of water because he cries all day long.

Charley’s depression is the kind that requires hospitalization. Arlene suggests they have another child.

They live on five thousand dollars a year. Bo is home schooled. Arlene sometimes sells flowers when she is not rutting through the Taos dump. In this kind of environment it is no wonder that Bo is desperate for a few treats. She writes food companies complaining about their products and gets free boxes of replacements. Her defiantly self-sufficient parents do not object.

Did I mention Arlene works in her vegetable garden in the nude? Charley is also anti-clothes, especially when company is around.

When young IRS agent Williams Gibbs (Jim Trust-Frost) comes a-calling, he gets stung by Arlene’s bees, starts hallucinating, and stays. Arlene nurses him back to health. All of a sudden, Charley starts talking to him when no one is looking.

Bo is so precocious I wanted to put a muzzle on her. She desperately needed a friend her own age. But Arlene and Charley are so principled in their hippie lifestyle that they nearly sacrifice Bo on the altar of poverty. However, Bo does just fine. The adult Bo (Amy Brenneman) introduces us to the story and narrates it in that solemn poetic cadence that haunts bad stage plays. It’s the kind of dialogue filled with spiritual phooey that makes you cringe.

Nothing happens and when it finally does, absolutely no explanation is given. Hey, it’s the desert. Nature gives; nature takes away. Weeds grow and animals roam free. Arlene does give Bo some home-grown “sage” advice: “Never kill anything you don’t eat.”

To think I got through adolescence without this kind of advice.

Directed very statically and, though he is not in it, Campbell Scott makes his presence obvious. The dialogue is heavy furniture and it does not surprise me that the screenwriter, Joan Ackermann, adapted her own play. Every word is a jewel here. Good movie dialogue flows differently from stage dialogue. They are two beasts loose in different jungles.

OFF THE MAP
Holedigger Films Inc.

Credits:
Producers: Campbell Scott, George VanBuskirk
Director: Campbell Scott
Screenwriter: Joan Ackermann
Director of photography: Juan Ruiz Anchia
Editor: Andy Keir

Cast:
Arlene: Joan Allen
Charley: Sam Elliott
Williams Gibbs: Jim True-Frost
George: J.K. Simmons
Adult Bo: Amy Brenneman
Bo: Valentina d'Angelis

Running time -- 105 minutes
No MPAA rating

by Victoria Alexander - FilmsInReview.com