The actor shines as a tetchy matriarch who forms an unlikely bond with her depressed grandson in a film drawn from writer-director Matthew J Saville's teenage experiences.
Juniper is a drama with black comic edges about a fragmented family, and the unexpectedly life-affirming influence of its particularly tetchy matriarch. In the lead role is Charlotte Rampling, an actor blessed with an epically scornful side eye capable of withering a vase of flowers from across a room.
Saville and Rampling worked on revising the script for three days after their first meeting in Paris. Two weeks later, Rampling officially accepted the role. Set in the 90s, the film unfolds in a grand, if unkempt house somewhere green and leafy in New Zealand. This family is wealthy, clearly, and when Ruth arrives from her home in England after a considerable absence and in failing health, it initially appears like she might be the direct link to a moneyed bloodline in the Old Country.
Her drinking, as well as her bullying, seem to be a manifestation of some sort of PTSD, long left simmering and unaddressed. Her grandson, who is left to help look after her while his father is called away to England, becomes the chief target of her rancour.
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