“Tallulah” Kills Three Birds With One Stone — Err… Baby
The one where Allison Janney gives a clueless Ellen Page advice about raising a baby (only, not Juno).
Five minutes into Tallulah, a story that entangles three women in the difficult world of motherhood, the protagonist steals a baby. Ellen Page plays Tallulah, or “Lu” as she is more commonly known, a desperate, homeless young girl who wanders to New York in search of her vanished boyfriend. By accidentally misleading an absent mother, Carolyn (played by Tammy Blanchard), into thinking she’s hotel housekeeping, Lu finds herself looking after an infant for the evening. In the frenzy of the trade-off later that evening, Lu makes the split-second decision to snatch the child from the feet of her already comatose, drunken mother and run out of the door with her.
She manages to win over her lover’s mother by convincing her that the kidnapped child is her own granddaughter so that the two of them have a place to stay. The rest of the film is spent in suspense of Lu’s secret being discovered.
Tallulah is a 2016 Sundance debut, written and directed by Orange Is the New Black writer, Sian Heder. Its similarities to Juno extend only about as far as the role of Allison Janney in Ellen Page’s complex baby dilemma, only this time, the baby is already earthside. Featuring a woman-dominated cast, a middle-aged gay couple, and the first pregnant, Black woman investigator that I’ve ever seen, Tallulah is stunningly diverse. If a woman can fill the role, a woman is in the role in Tallulah.
Every woman in Tallulah has the potential to be of questionable likability. It’s a bold choice to feature a vagabond kid with zero parenting skills, a careless, cheating trophy wife, and a bitter, middle-aged woman made lonely by the divorce of her recently-out gay husband, and have their worlds collide. It all works because of their roles in the child’s life and the things we, as the viewers, discover about each character as Lu’s lies unravel.
Page’s character lives the indie-movie dream. She hustles bars for booze, runs amok in hotel lobbies, and sells fresh-squeezed lemonade out of her beaten-up van. She meets Carolyn (Blanchard) entirely by mistake, but all it takes is a hundred-dollar tip in exchange for smearing makeup on Carolyn’s face to lock Lu into the deal of watching her daughter, Maddy, for the night.
Right off the bat, it seems like Carolyn is the villain of the film. With curlers in her hair and a scowl on her face, she’s clad in pink, flighty, and short-fused about her daughter’s lack of potty training. When she wakes from a drunken stupor to find that Tallulah ran off with her child, only then do we see genuine remorse in her eyes.
Allison Janney’s character, Margo, fictionally known as Lu’s boyfriend’s mother, shuts the door on Lu’s face upon her first arrival at her apartment doorstep. The second time, baby-clad, Margo gives her a one-night stay with exceptions to the rule. This visit turns into a permanent stay, as Margo, clinging to the memory of the son she hasn’t seen in two years, grows a soft-spot for Lu and Maddy and lends some parental guidance Lu’s way.
It would seem that in a story like this one, Lu’s character would evolve into a well-established woman, a solid mother figure for the child. This film goes in a different direction. Instead, Janney and Blanchard’s characters learn more about motherhood through Lu’s iffy decision-making than Lu does herself.
Lu doesn’t have a major character arc, really ever. The film ends with her in handcuffs, and it’s uncertain if she really learned from her mistakes as the last scene features her smiling face in the back of a cop car.
Instead, Tallulah wonderfully highlights the trials and errors that come with motherhood and raises questions about what constitutes it at all. The likelihood of a runaway young girl who only owns two outfits, makes eye contact with security cameras, and walks around with a stolen baby in broad daylight not getting caught by NYPD is slim. Still, what the film lacks in reality, it makes up for in emotion.
Midway through the movie, Carolyn starts to get a lot more teary-eyed at the thought of never seeing her child again. Her major character arc comes from admitting that she used to wish her daughter would be kidnapped so that she could just be rid of parenting altogether, to standing, arms outstretched in front of Tallulah, the police, and a waiting room full of ER patients, pleading for her daughter back.
Margo, who spends her single days writing books analyzing the dynamics of the family despite her own falling apart, finds forgiveness for Tallulah, despite her deceitfulness and swears to help her find her way out of this one. In the end, she loses a granddaughter, but gains a daughter-figure of sorts, having reunited with her son, Lu’s boyfriend, by the end of the film.
Page’s dry humor and appalling obliviousness to parenting go a long way in Tallulah. Stealing a baby to live in your van with you and stand on Manhattan street corners probably isn’t any better a move than leaving your child alone in your hotel suite with “housekeeping” for the night. Still, Tallulah’s actions are justified to us through her selfless motives. She may not be good at it, but her intent is to take Maddy away from the mother who never wanted her. In this way, we’re made to see Tallulah as more of a positive figure in Maddy’s life, though she isn’t a terribly good influence on her.
What Tallulah does better than most is well-thought-out, complex female characters. A particular favorite is Uzo Aduba’s role as an investigator in the disappearance of Carolyn’s child. A mother herself, and with one on the way, Aduba’s character furthers the meaning of motherhood in this film, particularly in a chilling scene where she calmly confronts Carolyn about eating crappy moms like her for breakfast.
Every bit of comedy that oozes out of every scene in which Tallulah hopelessly tries her hand at parenting is matched with a challenging conversation between some dichotomy of mother and child, whether that be between Margo and Lu or Carolyn and Lu. Each talk unravels terrible insecurities, shortcomings, and abandonment issues that each woman faces.
Aduba being the only woman of color in Tallulah; it is a predominantly white-centric film. While there could have been some more inclusive casting in this regard, Aduba’s role didn’t feel like it was fulfilling a quota Heder was trying to reach. Heder’s film still manages to feature a queer character played by a queer actor (Zachary Quinto), a woman of color, and a woman-driven plot, making it a considerable win for diversity.
Tallulah is available for streaming on Netflix!
