Plot
When a man meets a young girl in a parking lot he attempts to help her avoid a bleak destiny by initiating her into the beauty of the outside world. The journey shakes them in ways neither expects.
Release Year: 2015
Rating: 7.0/10 (176 voted)
Critic's Score: 61/100
Director: Ross Partridge
Stars: Ross Partridge, Oona Laurence, Jess Weixler
Storyline
Lamb, based on the novel by Bonnie Nadzam, traces the self-discovery of David Lamb in the weeks following the disintegration of his marriage and the death of his father. Hoping to regain some faith in his own goodness, he turns his attention to Tommie, an awkward and unpopular eleven-year-old girl. Lamb is convinced that he can help her avoid a destiny of apathy and emptiness, and takes Tommie for a road trip from Chicago to the Rockies, planning to initiate her into the beauty of the mountain wilderness. The journey shakes them in ways neither expects.
Writers: Bonnie Nadzam, Ross Partridge
Cast: Ross Partridge -
David Lamb
Oona Laurence -
Tommie
Jess Weixler -
Linny
Tom Bower -
Foster
Scoot McNairy -
Jesse
Lindsay Pulsipher -
Linda
Jennifer Lafleur -
Melissa
Joel Murray -
Wilson
Ron Burkhardt -
Walter Lamb
Mark Kelly -
Radio Reporter
(voice)
Jennifer Spriggs -
On-Site Reporter
(voice)
Taglines:
Innocence walks a fine line
Country: USA
Language: English
Release Date: 8 January 2016
Technical Specs
Runtime:
User Review
Author:
Rating:
From thequickflickcritic.blogspot.com/
First things first. "Lamb" explores a liaison between a male and a
female which is unequivocally inappropriate, unhealthy and unsettling.
Not to mention illegal. One half of this couple is a 47-year-old man.
The other, an 11-year-old girl. And while the bond forged between them
never becomes a sexual one, it is a relationship that categorically
made me feel consistently uncomfortable and squeamish.
With personal position firmly established and hardly exclusive, what
"Lamb" is ultimately ABOUT is two helplessly lost souls consumed in a
desperate search for someone who cares. And someone to care for. I
definitely can never condone the manner in which this compulsion is
consummated here. However, I completely understand this fundamental
need burning in us all. This is a film that tests in boldly serious and
stark terms our limits of what defines such integral human connection.
Ross Partridge writes, directs and stars as David Lamb, a man so
emotionally damaged that he sees a child as the savior of his severely
scarred soul. Partridge's role is a massively difficult one to deliver
upon effectively, constantly balancing precariously as he must upon the
most sensitive of fine lines. His personification of David maintains
the essential equilibrium demanded throughout, ultimately delivering as
he does so an astonishing performance that is at once loathsome as it
is emotionally cataclysmic.
Oona Laurence (Southpaw) is positively transcendent. Appearing to be
even younger than she is supposed to be here, Laurence infuses her
understandably deeply conflicted character of Tommie with an
impressively mature perspective intertwined with a naive innocence. She
owns the final moments of this movie. They are powerfully effecting.
Expect that they will stay with you, as they surely have done with me.
Partridge vividly conveys the evolution of this peculiar pair's
partnership through his wholesale contrast in setting. Beginning with a
series of scenes from a dispiriting urban underbelly, the director
deftly shifts the environment markedly, transporting us to and among
the spectacular wide open spaces of the American western prairie. It is
a sense of Shangri-La realized-a blissful place of near perfection for
the curious couple. And it is a state of being we all know can not
realistically be sustained.
"Lamb" will no doubt meet with controversial reception by audiences and
critics alike. Be this as it may, Partridge has succeeded mightily in
crafting a motion picture that I believe ascends well above the
territory of simple shock value and exploitation. And should you choose
to experience his story, and can somehow permit yourself, while
certainly to not ignore, but rather interpret beyond the inherently
troubling subject matter it examines so unflinchingly, you may find, as
did I, that you have been uniquely and richly rewarded.
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thequickflickcritic.blogspot.com/
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