What Alice Found (2003)
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins
Theatrical Release: Dec 5, 2003 Limited
Synopsis: Fed up with her life in New Hampshire, 18-year-old Alice (Emily Grace) gets in her car and heads for Florida to pursue her dreams of being a marine biologist and join a friend who is in college there. But she gets sidetracked after stopping at a rest stop where, according to middle-aged Good... Fed up with her life in New Hampshire, 18-year-old Alice (Emily Grace) gets in her car and heads for Florida to pursue her dreams of being a marine biologist and join a friend who is in college there. But she gets sidetracked after stopping at a rest stop where, according to middle-aged Good Samaritans Sandra (Judith Ivey) and Bill (Bill Raymond), someone apparently punctured her tire. Bill changes the tire for her, and the couple offers to let her follow them on the road to prevent further danger--but after her engine burns out completely several miles later, she has no choice but to hitch a southbound ride with her newfound guardians. Their unusual kindness becomes increasingly suspect, though, when she discovers that Sandra is a truck stop prostitute and Bill is her pimp. Once her initial shock dissipates, though, shy Alice learns that by following Sandra's lead, she can make as much money in a few minutes as she's used to making in a week. With a grainy, digital-video look, A. Dean Bell's frank and surprising road movie is likely to win over all but the least adventurous or most jaded viewer. Ivey is superb and Grace--in a fine debut performance--expertly embodies wide-eyed naiveté. A well-chosen soundtrack enhances the visuals. [More]
Genre: Dramas
Starring: Emily Grace, Judith Ivey, Bill Raymond, Michael C. Maronna, Justin Parkinson
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Reviews
What we found is a bleak, but interesting look into a world where the line is blurred between good people and bad. Judith Ivey's performance is the real jewel of the film.
An almost constantly surprising coming-of-age film with a dark twist that manages to take the high road with what is well-exploited material.
Assisted by the harsh immediacy of digital video, writer-director A. Dean Bell puts forth his material with utter objectivity.
It neither glamorizes nor demonizes truck-stop whoredom; it merely depicts it, with little of the internal strife that ought to accompany it.
The film's somewhat light-hearted tone is wholly inappropriate in what is, in essence, a story of sexual predators.
Ivey delivers a sassy, no-nonsense performance and Grace shows herself a sensitive young actress, but neither overcomes Bell's pretensions or digital-video limitations.
A fine merging of means, material and ego -- a nicely acted, simple little road movie vacuumed free of any indie scene smugness or self-satisfaction.
A solid character piece that deftly probes the complicity of both sides in a morally dubious relationship.
Ivey is fascinating, cooing nonstop in a cozy Southern accent, friendly and accepting, but also observant and oddly unknowable. It's a performance that even gets better on second viewing.
Bell forces us to see characters from the proverbial wrong side of the tracks in a distinctly human light, neither ennobling nor pitying.


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