In "Off the Map", Bo(Valentina de Angelis) is a precocious 12-year old being home schooled by her hippie parents, Arlene(Joan Allen) and Charley(Sam Elliott), who are living the life of Henry David Thoreau on a self-sustaining homestead in New Mexico.(The household income is only $5,000 per year.) In her spare time,
Bo goes hunting, extorts samples from companies and is working on a credit card application. The main crisis in their household is Charley's deep depression.(My guess is that the film takes place in November 1980, shortly after the election of Ronald Reagan, an event that darkened a lot of lives.) The family income is low enough not to require them to pay income taxes, but they have not been filing the requisite forms, thus bringing them to the attention of the IRS. An auditor, William Gibbs(Jim True-Frost), arrives just as Arlene is weeding her garden in the nude... "Off the Map" strives to be an eccentric coming-of-age story but it is listless and too earnest for its own good. The only jolt of energy comes from the arrival of an IRS auditor, never a good sign. The movie cannot escape its theatrical roots, even with beautiful location shooting. I do admire the family and how they live but the film wrongly avoids any discussion of politics. The reason many people keep their earnings down to avoid paying income taxes is so they do not support the American military. J.K. Simmons and Sam Elliott give performances so low-key that they are practically somnabulant.(I do not know if there is a way to portray depression accurately onscreen, but this is certainly not it.) Amazingly, Joan Allen hardly registers at all. At least, Valentina de Angelis, can be relied on to rescue the movie from the doldrums.
June 23, 2006
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