Images courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
CAROLINA CAROLINE— 4 STARS
Watching Adam Carter Rehmeier’s Carolina Caroline calls to mind the many layers of appeal possible in the crime-romance subgenre of movies. On one level, there’s the taboo draw of watching the ethical battles of right and wrong when it comes to decisions and choices. Folks might wish they could break laws, too, or, if not, marvel at the audacity on display beyond their own personal limits. From a heart-quickening standpoint, the craft of shooting and telling a solid crime thriller lends itself to escapist danger, which plays well on the big or small screen.
LESSON #1: WHEN PASSION OVERFLOWS TO OTHER PARTS OF LIFE— Yet, one must look deeper than mere choices and actions to see the true energy that heats a romantic crime film like Carolina Caroline compared to something more cold, calculating, or technical. The answer there is simply, and powerfully, passion. For audiences to get swept up enough to ignore the wrongs and root for the “bad guys,” they must be granted and see a level of intensity within the individuals committing the crimes. When that zealousness is amorous, as it is in Rehmeier’s film and so many other exemplars of the genre, it amplifies everything else. The motives get bolder, and the course of dangers turns more perilous.
The beneficiary of all that escalation is us, the cinematic voyeurs, dazzled, intoxicated, and enthralled by the entire pungent palette. So many of those aforementioned passionate traits radiate in Carolina Caroline like a muscle car’s headlight in front of a roaring engine speeding down a road. While we’ve seen these types of stories since the grand era of film noir eighty-plus years ago, and endlessly since, as the archetypes advance with the times, the appeal has never waned.
Carolina Caroline opens in a moment of a young woman (Samara Weaving of the Ready or Not series) in a short, black-haired wig and narrow sunglasses, leaving a shoddy hotel room solo. She proceeds to carjack a man at gunpoint in broad daylight, before beginning a series of short-change swindles to amass extra cash in tricky exchanges of different bills with unwitting store clerks. In the background, her image appears on the television news as a thief on the run, declared armed and dangerous. All of this is happening through what appears to be a tailspin of emotion for the woman, one that leaves us hanging once a chyron drops a transition to “three months earlier.”
Seen now without the sable wig, this woman is named Caroline, and she’s working at a Texas gas station, stocking shelves and watching the more exciting world go by. One day, in walks the denim-jacketed and goateed smolder of Oliver (Kyle Gallner, Rehmeier’s lead from his celebrated third film Dinner in America). We see him pull the same cash exchange switcheroo shown in the introduction of the movie (something that deserves its own lesson in this review or a devious YouTube tutorial), answering one planted seed with more to follow.
When Caroline fliratiously follows and confronts Oliver on his scheme, he invites her (more like she invites herself) to spend the day with him, “just passing through.” She’s all for catching his eye and demonstrating her own cleverness, even when Oliver is clearly not a squeaky-clean fellow. Her cling to him lasts all day, from bouncing down backroads in his Chevelle SS and sharing a barroom slow dance to Jason Isbell’s haunting ballad “Cover Me Up” to a steamy late-night swimming hole excursion.
LESSON #2: ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS— All along the way, Caroline cannot stop asking Oliver questions. She’s a sponge for wanting to understand his methods. Amused and smitten, Oliver obliges her with every answer, creating a wonderfully dialogue-driven intimacy within Carolina Caroline. Her questions reveal her enthusiasm and perceptive fervor, and the extreme lucidity and wisdom of his replies are higher than those of a podunk simpleton trying to get his kicks. In what might be the best one of the bunch, Oliver asks Caroline what she is still doing here after their day of dalliance and deceit. Her revelatory response is a self-description of a woman staying with someone or something that’s no good for them because, through her less-than-rich life as a kid abandoned by her mother at a young age, “no good” is what they know and all they know.
Case in point, there’s a dynamite scene later in Carolina Caroline where Caroline, who’s been heartset on finding her biological mother, Deborah, finally tracks the mysterious woman down at a seedy bar in South Carolina. Thinking or even fearing the apple might not fall far from the tree, Deborah is revealed to be a chain-smoking and screwdriver-slaming loudmouth, played by the incomparable Kyra Sedgwick. A sunnier version of this scene would lead to lofty answers, tearful apologies, and either a renewed bond or karmic comeuppance. Sedgwick and the trajectory honed by Rehmeier make some, or even none, of those expectations come easily, or at all, in one of the most powerful scenes of the film.
Normally, especially in these con-man situations in crime films, we’re waiting for Caroline to be the unwitting mark, the girl lured by the influx of cash and the doting attention of a dashing stranger. In watching Oliver’s smooth charisma lubricate his every success, we predict that he’s scooped up a hit-it-and-quit-it conquest or two before throughout his ambling south of the Mason-Dixon Line. After a while, one realizes Kyle Gallner’s rogue was nowhere to be seen in the introduction reel of the movie. We prepare for future double-crosses or abandonment as the two—the veteran and the newbie—go from small thefts to full-on bank robberies.
LESSON #3: THE PASSIONS OF THE BRAZEN AND DESPERATE— This is where the increased embedded passion of Carolina Caroline elevates the fable. Oliver’s politically-charged big picture motive for committing the crimes he chooses carries no greed or anger, only “the angle” to exploit the flaws of the larger economic or corporate system above their lot in life. His lack of remorse isn’t evil. It’s existential and extends to understanding the checks and triggers of human behavior, creating a confident dedication to the endeavor that is stronger than petty foolishness, hellbent on plain money. Moreover, their hot-and-heavy companionship becomes the genuine article. They truly become bonded and inseparable, even in the face of desperation, when, like so many crime movies, they didn’t quit while they were ahead, or the inevitable fall must be taken.
For the Carolina Caroline screenplay, written by Tom Dean (Charlie Harper) and the debuting William Thomas Dean IV, to even entertain these more mature themes is a testament to its quality and uniqueness amid the sea of film noir and neo-noir mirrors and imitators. Anyone can put a hot girl and a studly man together with a couple of guns and fire off some ill-advised bullets and Cupid’s arrows. Samara Weaving and Kyle Gallner, like their characters, forge something stronger than a fleeting fling, and that weight means the world. Echoing one more of those questions from Lesson #2, at a tipping point, Caroline asks Oliver, “Are we good people pretending to be bad, or bad ones pretending to be good?” He doesn’t answer, and that enigma and shade of doubt permeate the picture. Because Carolina Caroline exudes how risks can either add to and take away vivacity, the experience sticks with you in a spellbinding way.
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