morrison-dylan-fan After catching the superb The Fundamentals of Caring another "Netflix exclusive" recommendation came up over the credits. With having enjoyed seeing Ellen Page in the slick Thriller The East,I decided that it was time to meet Tallulah.The plot:Deciding after running their smashed up van on stolen credit cards that it is time he goes back to meet his mum,Nico gets in a heated argument with his girlfriend Tallulah.Waking up the next morning to find Nico gone, Tallulah decides to travel down to New York. Reaching New York before Nico, Tallulah tracks down his mum Margo,who tells Tallulah that she has not seen her son in two years,and for her to get lost. Scavenging for food at a hotel, Tallulah is seen by hotel guest Carolyn. Believing her to be a staff member, Carolyn asks Tallulah if she can look after her baby whilst she goes on a date. Accepting the offer, Tallulah is taken aback,when Carolyn returns home drunk. Disguised at what she sees, Tallulah kidnaps the baby.View on the film:Spending almost the whole movie dragging a baby along,Ellen Page gives an incredible performance as Tallulah. Never shying away from the rough edges of Tallulah,Page shows a touching playfulness and dedication towards the baby,which Page smartly keeps away from undermining the casual Punk attitude Tallulah expresses over the crimes she commits. Cooling down when meeting Tallulah for the second time (this time with a baby) Allison Janney gives a sparkling performance as Margo. Reuniting with Page for the third time, Janney gives Margo a nervousness of being comfortable in her own skin,which Janney breaks with the natural chemistry shared with Page and an empathetic openness.Inspired by her own babysitting experiences,writer/director Sian Heder makes her film directing debut by taking on the "never work with children" challenge and passing with flying colours. Hunched in Tallulah and Nico's hippy van, Heder & cinematographer Paula Huidobro give the baby run an earthy atmosphere,where washed out colours get under the brittle nails that Tallulah is living her life under. Moving Tallulah and the baby from rough streets to high class apartments, Heder tightly holds the close-ups to engulf the viewer in the pressure on Tallulah,which is freed by a startling flight of fantasy bookend.Softening Margo when Tallulah returns with a baby,the screenplay by Sian Heder spins a hip,whip-smart "Women's Picture" touchingly painting the friendship between the women from abrasive over Tallulah keeping her most personal things hidden from Margo,to the explosively rabble rousing,as Tallulah helps Margo to discover that she can proudly hold her head high.Giving the kidnapping a sly comedic underline, Heder wisely never makes excuses for Tallulah's actions,with Heder avoiding any moral justification,to present Tallulah at her most rough-edged Punk best,as Tallulah grabs the baby and is gone baby gone.

mandi ...Just like a lot of movies I've seen lately...that ending...wtf?! I can't stand movies with absolutely no closure for an ending (with the exception of a few psychological thriller, mystery/suspense, and horror movies). It's like everyone gets tired of making the movie so they just end it suddenly. All this time spent on character development...trying to make you like them or empathize with their situation, and yet you're not supposed to care about what happens to them or the outcome of the story? It's absurdity. Why the ratings are so high for this film is beyond me. Not the worst, but there are much better films out there. Watch I Heart Huckabees instead.

Andrea M The actors bring these characters to life and you remarkably wind up falling in love with all of them. They became people for me and I will probably think about them for days. I would like to give a special nod to Allison Janney, whom I remember fondly from her "West Wing" days. She is an actress to be treasured. I love seeing real women having real, complex feelings. Her presence in this movie is a gift. Without rehashing the plot summary, I will simply say that "Tallulah," is an incredibly well written, acted, and directed story about love and connection that I had the pleasure of immersing myself in this afternoon. Not many movies do that for me these days. That is why, after years of using IMDb, before there was such a thing as "an app for that," I have been inspired to write my first ever review here.

MisterWhiplash One nice thing up front: this movie gets how New York City works when it comes to giving tickets (though I don't know if it would've gotten a 'boot', more likely it would've been towed, but I digress).Tallulah is a prototypical example of an independent film that features two very well known actors (at least to some, I'd think Ellen Page is and Allison Janey may be hit or miss for some, still, even after all these years), and *feels* like a first time Sundance-festival-bound indie film. But it's not necessarily a negative, or something to be wary of, in the case of this story. A lot of that does come down to the actors, and (mostly) realistic reactions to how the story goes into one 'oh s***' moment after another and, again, it comes down to the choices the characters make which can be desperate, foolish, but also for their own good in a way.Tallulah is wandering from place to place being basically if Juno several years later was a hobo and lost a lot of the snappy dialog (Page in slightly similar attire, though grungier, more "street" to give it obnoxious quotes). Her man friend Nico runs off on her for some reason or another (he wants to go home to his mom, she doesn't want to do that, and during the night he splits - oh, and why he split in the first place is and isn't clear). So she finds his mother's apartment in New York city, she rejects him, and the she ambles about into the Waldwick hotel where she stumbles upon a drunken socialite-dilettante (Tammy Blanchard in a performance that may be overlooked but she gives this blonde dummie a lot more depth than you'd expect, some of that's in the writing). She has a baby, and Tallulah is tasked to take care of her while she's out for the day, thinking she's a housekeeper. Later this blonde lady stumbles drunk into bed, Tallulah feels wrong about leaving a crying baby all alone and kidnaps her.Good premise and a strong beginning to a story that doesn't give us a protagonist who is necessarily 'likeable' or 'sympathetic' just because we're told to like her. She's complicated, she's lost, she explains later on in the story briefly and just enough so that her faults go back to a place of abandonment (she does turn to Nico's mother, Allison Janey, for help, and she reluctantly agrees making the spine of the movie). What I liked is that the story gives some things to explain motivations for stuff - why Janey's character Margo can't let go of her past relationship which ended in betrayal (oddly enough Janey once again being the 'beard' to a gay man in a marriage like on Masters of Sex) and why Tallulah can't stay still for very long - but the actors are given a lot of room to play with, to find the characters on screen so that we can also relate to them well enough. So when something "quirky" like Tallulah pulling down all of Margo's ex's paintings off the wall to 're-paint' at first seems to turn out badly and then becomes a bonding scene, it works because we can believe these people in it.In other words, this is a movie that has some light crime-elements to it with the kidnapped baby, maybe in its way a hybrid of a New York intellectual comedy-drama and a slight, a little bit, of neo-noir, and it mostly works if you like Page and Janey (oh and some nice character people like Zachary Quinto as the 'new' guy for Margo's ex, David Zayas and Orange is the New Black's Aduba pop up and the latter even gets some good character motivation, nicely done writer-director Heder). It also has that, um, slightly odd touches that at first are acceptable and then pop up at the very end: floating in a dream can work once, but twice, I'm not so sure. And there are certain story contrivances that do come up, mostly in the last third or act or whatever, and it does make you realize this story's coming to a wrap-up in some ways that do and don't make sense.But for all of these misgivings Tallulah does function as a quality dramatic film with a few light touches about what it means to have a lack of options or resolve, to really be caught up in existential dilemmas that matter, whether it's having a baby that's not yours to become close with or to let go of a marriage that didn't work when YOU are a writer about marriage (yeah, that's here as a thing). If you asked what I thought I'd say 'I liked it, it has heart, and... that's about it, and it's enough.'