Juno was recommended to me by a friend. I was told I’d like it, but I had my doubts.
First, the subject of adoption, birth mothers, birth fathers, birth family, and desire for a child are close to my heart. I have two bio children and two children adopted from China. I anticipated that the handling of the story would be superficial and would be hurtful to someone in the triad. I wasn’t sure I was up for it.
Then another adoptive mom friend recommended it as a movie I would like.
I was pleasantly surprised. Many moments are comical. Others are very touching.
Juno is played to perfection by Ellen Page. She is sweet, cocky, tender-hearted, kind. She has a best friend; an oddball, loving family; and a boy, Bleeker, played quite adorably, who loves her as she does him.
And so she finds she is pregnant.
Her step-mother is the kind of step-mother you’d like to have if you had one, especially in a situation like this. Played by Allison Janney, she is also perfection. It is worth the price of the movie to see her explode at the ultra-sound tech (who also plays her part to perfection.)
Her dad, played by J.K. Simmons is the (hoped for) typical dad in this sort of situation. Not quite connected to it all, loves his daughter, wants the best for her (vs. a dad who rails at his daughter — like, yeah, it takes two, duh!) His counsel to her, when she asks, about what she should look for in a potential partner is good advice, to find someone who loves her just as she is, who will stick with her through everything and think she is beautiful even if she isn’t in a particular moment.
I wonder that neither one of them bring up the option of keeping and raising her child by herself, with their support.
The family she finds to adopt her child are yuppies, far more wealthy than her family, and by chance (design of Diablo Cody) what she hoped for (someone who is a musician.) And yes, occasionally a potential adoptive parent (PAP) is chosen almost the first week they decide they’d like to adopt, but it is far more likely that it is a lengthier process with false hopes (as Jennifer Garner mentions at one point, that they were disappointed once.)
Jennifer Garner shows the sorrow, the desire, the love and the fear in the process. I was glad she didn’t have a spirit of entitlement.
I did not like Bleeker’s mom. I even wondered if she knew that he had fathered a child. Contrast her attitude to Juno’s step-mother’s whose longing, then happiness, radiates from her face at the end of the movie.
I did not like the sleaze ball yuppie husband. I was glad it didn’t go where I thought it might.
And yes, marriages break up over the desire for a child or adoption. That part is true.
I’m not sure closed adoption (vs. open) is the right way to go (or vice versa.) Which is better for the child? And it wasn’t really true to life that a birth mother would know the address of the potential aparents. Generally, they would meet in a neutral location. How could the adoption be closed when everyone knows where the aparent lives? and when the birth mother has visited numerous times prior to birth?
I know some adoptees are hurt to be adoptees. I likely would have been. You can’t tie up all the loose ends of familial emotions in a movie. This movie is the start of the story. I’d like to see where it goes in the future. I’d like to know how the child turns out, if he misses his birth family (maybe less likely than a girl? I don’t know the percentages.) I think it would be very difficult to raise a boy without a father/father figure. Will the adoption stay closed?
The hospital scene is funny, touching, endearing, and heart wrenching. The movie ends with a different scene.
Have you seen it? I give it a 3.
Karin
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Adoption, Movies
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