Field’s ‘Beautiful’ Looks Good

Minnie Driver easily lives up to the title of the new film “Beautiful,” in which she stars so impressively under Sally Field’s aptly nuanced direction. Yet Driver’s angular features are just distinctive enough to make it credible that her small-town Illinois beauty contestant might find it a struggle to come out a winner.

Written perceptively by Jon Bernstein, “Beautiful” is not yet another easy satire on a target that is by now overly familiar. Field and Bernstein understand that beauty contests can be so inherently silly and demeaning that they satirize themselves without undue extra nudging. This film’s wise and compassionate view is that, for many young women of limited opportunities, winning a beauty contest represents their best hope, realistic or not, for a better life. This is certainly the case for Mona, who starts dreaming of beauty contest stardom in childhood--and with good reason.

Played by Colleen Rennison, in a great matchup with Driver, the 12-year-old Mona has a flashy, unimaginative and indifferent mother (Linda Hart) and a slob of a stepfather (Brent Briscoe). They are a booze-cigarettes-and-TV couple who see no point in trying to make something of one’s life.

Beauty contests mesmerize Mona, and she starts seeing them as a way of escape. She swiftly realizes that she’ll get no help or support in achieving her goal from her mother. Determination spurs enterprise, and soon Mona is taking on enough after-school jobs to get herself--all on the installment plan--braces, entry fees for contests like the Pretty Little Princess Pageant, and singing, dancing and modeling lessons from the formidable, husky-voiced Verna Chickle (an amusing Kathleen Turner), who seems to see herself as a Lauren Bacall stranded in the heartland.

Mona has become a breathtakingly self-sufficient outsider totally focused on a goal regarded as misguided by everyone who knows about it. It is entirely possible, even likely, that Mona would eventually refocus her energies had she not come across a pair of world-class enablers. Little Ruby (Jacqueline Steiger) is a fellow social outcast, apparently because she wears glasses and is of modest background. Ruby is a quiet, selfless type who not only buys into Mona’s dream, but also takes her home to meet her loving grandmother Alberta (Sylvia Short), a nurse who is also a fabulous seamstress only too glad to whip up Mona’s contest costumes. The loving support she receives from Ruby and Alberta allows Mona to become all the more self-absorbed and not just a little ruthless.

The pattern of Mona’s life is now firmly established. We flash forward to the adult Ruby (Joey Lauren Adams) and Mona (Driver) not only sharing an apartment, but Ruby also pretending to be the mother of 8-year-old Vanessa (Hallie Kate Eisenberg, another great match-up with Driver), whom Mona bore out of wedlock.

All of this is essentially an absorbing and expertly told prologue to the main event, which occurs when, against all odds, Mona beats out all those conventionally pretty, perky blonds to become Miss Illinois, which places her in the hallowed Miss American Miss competition. A somewhat contrived, but forgivably so, incident places Ruby out of action, leaving Mona to head off to Long Beach for the finals without her.

In her loneliness she urges the feisty Vanessa, a veritable carbon copy of herself in temperament as well as looks, to come along with her. Mona inadvertently has brought about a confrontation with herself even more important than whether or not she becomes Miss American Miss.

Driver has that invaluable gift of taking us into the imagination of the young women she plays so compellingly--this ability is in full force here as it was, for example in “The Governess.” We understand and empathize with Mona and her ardent dreams so well that we never lose sympathy for her no matter how selfish and calculating she becomes.

In a film of strong performances--Leslie Stefanson’s vengeful Joyce and Herta Ware’s blissfully suicidal Clara among them--Adams deserves special credit in making Ruby seem selfless without becoming a wimp. (Still, you would like to know whether or not she ever makes time for boyfriends or, indeed, whether she has a job that allows her to support Mona so that she can be a full-time beauty contestant.)

In a feature directorial debut that never feels like one, Field is as effortless behind a camera as she is in front of one. Bernstein, a gifted writer of women’s roles, even allows Kathleen Robertson and Bridgette L. Wilson dimension as two of Mona’s top competitors. It is Robertson’s Miss Tennessee who has the film’s key line: “We’re just white trash girls trying to break the code.”

* MPAA rating: PG-13, for language and thematic elements. Times guidelines: language, adult themes but suitable for mature children.

‘Beautiful’

Minnie Driver: Mona

Hallie Kate Eisenberg: Vanessa

Joey Lauren Adams: Ruby

Kathleen Turner: Verna Chickle

A Destination Film presentation in association with Flashpoint Ltd. and Prosperity Pictures of a 2 Drivers, Fogwood Films production. Director Sally Field. Producers John Bertolli, B.J. Rack. Executive producers Dick Vane, Kate Driver, Wendy Japhet, Barry London, Brent Baum, Steve Stabler, Marty Fink, David Forrest, Beau Rogers. Screenplay Jon Bernstein. Cinematographer Robert Yeoman. Editor Debra Neil-Fischer. Music John Frizzell. Costumes Chrisi Karvonides-Dushenko. Production designer Charles Breen. Art director Leslie Thomas. Set decorator Jeffrey Kushon. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes.

In general release.