TIFF 2011: Violet & Daisy

Heading into the TIFF homestretch and the final weekend of screenings.


Last night's movie was Violet & Daisy, the directorial debut of Geoffrey Fletcher (previously an Oscar winning screenwriter for Precious) and starring Alexis Bledel and Saoirse Ronan as the titular characters. Violet (Bledel) and Daisy (Ronan) are assassins, the numbers 8 and 9 quirkily sewn on to every piece of clothing they wear. They are also teenage girls who jump on beds, chew bubble gum and are obsessed Barbie Sunday, some sort of Britney Spearsish pop star. The movie opens with them dressed as nuns, carrying pizza boxes and telling each other lame jokes (meant to highlight Daisy's naiveté) before entering an apartment building and opening fire on a group of gunmen. Afterwards, after agreeing to their next job (and getting the details from Danny Trejo), they break into the apartment of their target, Michael (James Gandolfini), and promptly fall asleep on the couch waiting for him to return home. The job, of course, isn't as straightforward as they'd like and the girls and Michael fall into talking, eating oatmeal cookies and fending off the attack of another set of thugs also arriving to take Michael out. There are flashbacks and fantasy sequences and discussions, and in the end no real clear resolution or future direction for the characters.

The movie premiered on Thursday night and Fletcher hung around to introduce the film and do a Q&A following the screening. He took a lot of questions from the crowd but didn't provide a lot of really clear answers to them. Every response was just a bit vague, whether the question was about his influences as a director or the meaning or symbolism of elements of some of the sequences in the film.


Overall, I'd say the movie was fine (yeah, I realize how tepid that sounds as I write it but I don't have anything stronger to say). It was interesting to see a new side of Bledel who has always played pretty goody-goody roles. Some of the scenes were interestingly shot and the soundtrack was quite good. Between this and Damsels in Distress, I'm wondering if there was some memo that went out to Hollywood about naming female characters after flowers (a Rose shows up in the mix as well).