Butler's Cinema Scene

Ross Partridge, Oona Laurence

“LAMB” My rating: B-

136 minutes | MPAA rating: PG-13

“Uncomfortable” doesn’t begin to describe “Lamb,” a drama about a 47-year-old man’s obsession with an 11-year-old girl.

Creeped out yet?

The good news is that Ross Partridge‘s film is anything but exploitative and that the relationship depicted is not sexual…although there are enough stranger/danger moments to fuel a month’s worth of after-school specials.

In addition to directing the film, Partridge — who looks like he could be Dermot Mulroney’s stand in — wrote the screenplay (adapting Bonnie Nadzam‘s novel) and plays the leading role of David Lamb, a middle-aged nobody losing his grip.

Lamb works in a job he doesn’t care about (maybe he’s in the insurance game).  His wife has thrown him out of the house and he’s living in a Chicago motel. His alcoholic, shut-in father has just died. And he’s having a joyless affair with Linny (Jess Weixler of TV’s “The Good Wife”), a co-worker half his age.

He meets seventh grader Tommie (“Southpaw’s” Oona Laurence) when she tries to pick him up in a convenience store parking lot on a dare from her friends.  Lamb deduces that this waif hasn’t a clue about the trouble that could come of such a lark and befriends her.

Tommie’s mom and stepdad are addicted to TV and joy juice, so apparently they don’t immediately notice when Tommie takes up Lamb’s offer of a road trip from Chicago to his late father’s long-abandoned vacation cabin the foothills of the Rockies.

Oona Laurence

Lamb’s motives may not be sexual but he’s using the girl just the same.  He senses in her another lost soul, albeit one who might be able to turn things  around with a few life lessons.  Somehow he decides he’s just the guy to provide that instruction.

Patridge’s performance is simultaneously touching and skin-crawling.  Lamb seems sincere in his efforts to provide Tommie with a badly-needed father figure, but his professions of love come weirdly close to Humbert Humbert territory. And he’s not above using psychological manipulation on his young companion.

Young Laurence is terrific, despite having to wrap her head around a character who is both painfully innocent and the smartest individual in the room. She somehow pulls it off.

The legal ramifications of Lamb and Tommie’s little vacation — at one point he comments that it’s going to look to the outside world an awful lot like a kidnapping — are pretty much shrugged off in favor of a two-handed character study.

The film is terrific looking — Partridge has a fine eye  for both the bland anonymity of strip-mall America and the sweeping vistas of big sky country.

But it’s in the moments of intense conversation that “Lamb” takes us on a daring and unsettling journey. Those looking for pat answers should keep looking.

| Robert W. Butler