The Frame

It’s been hailed by critics everywhere, it’s been called this year’s Little Miss Sunshine (it isn’t; it’s less calculating), Ellen Page has been acclaimed for her performance as the unexpectedly pregnant teenager Juno. What should I say except that it lived up to all I’d heard, Page impressed me even above my expectations, and the script is one of the cleverest of the year, though it does stoop to the occasional easy joke. But the show is Ellen Page’s from start to finish. Juno is smart, snarky, and independent, but a good portion of her persona masks her vulnerability and her fear of creating a doomed relationship. Subtle expressions of affected apathy and deep caring shift across Page’s face from second to second. If she doesn’t win an Oscar for something within the next five years, I’ll eat my shoe (Juno isn’t an isolated triumph for her; she was also incredible a couple of years ago in Hard Candy). Meanwhile, the pregnancy plot isn’t sugar-coated, nor is it vulgarized; it might be said that Juno is the answer to the decidedly male-centric Knocked Up, which hardly allowed Allison to be a round character at all. I pretty much agree, but I can imagine that Knocked Up’s supporters will point out that Juno’s teenaged father (Michael Cera) is given a bit of a short shrift here, as a father at least, if perhaps not as a potential boyfriend. He has very little say in the decisions Juno makes about the baby’s future. I will point out that of the three big unplanned pregnancy comedies this year (Waitress is the third), Juno is the only one that even acknowledges the concept of abortion. I’m not in favor of abortion, but the fact that Juno considered it and rejected it, instead choosing to find an adoptive couple, felt a lot more realistic than Waitress’s offhanded rejection and Knocked Up’s obliviousness of it.
Superior