Photo via movpins
“My wife takes pills and I drink. That’s the contract we’ve struck up.”
To some of us, those might sound like legitimate and awesome vows to utter at the wedding, in fact it’s probably a pretty big catalyst for a huge portion of our population. However, let August: Osage County be your cautionary tale. If these are your terms of marriage, you and your family will most likely encounter the plot points that consistently slap you in the face throughout the film. BAM suicide BAM addiction BAM insanity BAM incest, BAM infidelity and most frighteningly, BAM Julia Roberts yelling at you to eat your fucking fish.
The family is gathered after their alcoholic Papa has gone missing, to the old farm house in desert plains Osage County, Oklahoma, which is about as barren as the youngest sister, Ivy (hysterectomy joke, truly sorry). This is where you’d expect the fond memories to start flowing along with the wine and for everyone to realise how much they’ve missed each other.
Instead, it’s an all-out shitfight. Meryl Streep’s character, Violet, is addicted to prescription meds which have made her more pure evil than her character in The Devil Wears Prada, and that bitch is MEAN. She is literally referred to as the devil. Just let that sink in. She makes you want to curl up and cry as she individually attacks each and every person who has made the trip to Osage County, to the point where I was half expecting her to turn to me and snarl “And Sally, I saw you eat that popcorn out of your cleavage. You disgust me,” to which I would submissively nod and hang my head in shame.
If you haven’t picked up on it, this movie is potentially one of the most depressing ever to grace theatres. Yes it may be uncomfortable and depressing and cause some emotional instability and unavoidable life questioning when you find the incest scenes cute but it’s raw and engaging. It takes commercial cinema’s Daddy issues and raises you a few generations of Mummy issues. Oh, you’re a stripper now ‘cause Daddy didn’t love you? Talk to me when you’re as fucked up as Julia Roberts is in this film. Yelling at her daughter for watching Phantom of the Opera and whatnot. And if that’s not heartbreaking enough, her daughter is played by Little Miss Sunshine herself as a chain smoking, home-wrecking 14 year old. It’s pure Oscar bait.
There’s way too much left unsaid for the sake of spoilers to feel satisfied in completing this review. This movie is four entire seasons of Bold and the Beautiful: Country Style crammed into 130 minutes. Depressing as it may be, director John Woods has done a marvellous job in creating entirely new personas for well-known actors such as Streep and Roberts and captured a visually and contextually engaging film. Just make sure you’re on good terms with your family before watching this one, or it’ll hit you right where it hurts.
Written by Sally Coates
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