« How do you know if we’re good people pretendin’ to be bad, or bad ones pretendin’ to be good? »
Caroline Daniels (Samara Weaving), whose desire to leave her small Texas town leads her to cross paths with a charismatic con man (Kyle Gallner), weaves a plot mixing crime and passion across the American Southeast with him.
With Carolina Caroline, Adam Rehmeier offers a road movie that is reminiscent of Natural Born Killers. He thus proposes a film of love and questioning that brings a dose of adrenaline and touching moments.
The bird can fly away, but will it be happier?
One of my favorite movies is Natural Born Killers. It was the similarities in the synopsis that made me want to watch Carolina Caroline. I must admit that I started the viewing with a certain anxiety. As a general rule, when you start a movie because it reminds you of a movie you love, it’s a straight line into a wall. But Adam Rehmeier took me by surprise and completely destabilized me.
Caroline (Samara Weaving) et Oliver (Kyle Gallner)
Yes, in both works there are similarities. The couple who falls in love and quickly becomes a notorious criminal duo, the younger woman who falls for the older man, the man who falls for love, the path of destruction that the couple leaves behind… That makes a lot of similarities. Yet, the two movies remain fundamentally different, and that is not bad at all.
Poor Caroline dreams of meeting her mother whom she has never known. To do this, she must cross half the country. At the heart of the film we find this contradiction that many experience: staying in the comfort of what we know, even if it is a form of misery; or leaving this security to live one’s freedom. For Caroline, just like for Oliver, leaving compares to living the great freedom of birds. But does flying away make you happier? Is that not a bit of the dilemma that often leads a person to stay in their little misery? This fear that the grass is not actually greener elsewhere.
A solid soundtrack
To support the state of mind of the characters, the soundtrack plays a central role. The chosen pieces touch the viewer directly in the heart or deep in the brain. Each song seems perfect to convey Caroline’s or Oliver’s feelings.
Caroline (Samara Weaving) | Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
The two highlights occur accompanied by the pieces My father’s house, performed by Emmylou Harris, and Cover me up, by Jason Isbell. Two songs found at important moments that will precipitate the characters towards the brutal and inevitable fall.
The neon-lit image in these disturbing and deeply moving scenes adds a layer to the emotion carried by the characters and the music. The variations in lighting between regular scenes and brutal moments are striking.
A little more…
The question I put at the beginning is not chosen at random. It represents a question that has troubled the human mind for a long time. A question about which a colleague and friend and I had a long discussion lately: is the human fundamentally bad or fundamentally good?
Oliver (Kyle Gallner) | Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
The director chooses not to give an answer, but he also chooses to make his characters sympathetic, lovable. We want them to succeed, despite the bad slope on which they embark.
The result is a surprisingly touching film despite its style and subject. And a film that will find itself right next to good old Natural Born Killers to fuel my moments of weakness.
