Review

A middle-aged woman, Mary Jo, raises her twelve-year old daughter Ava alone. But she is geographically and emotionally unstable, and when she meets truck driver Jack, Ava views this new relationship disapprovingly, making it hard for Mary Jo to strike a balance between her love life and the education of her daughter...

A fairly nurtured script yields quite a few touching scenes between the mother and her daughter, like when Mary Jo teaches Ava how to kiss her boyfriend with the help of... an apple. Janet McTeer, as Mary Jo, delivers a finely nuanced performance which brought her an Oscar nomination.

Despite a somewhat bland direction, Gavin O'Connor's Tumbleweeds is a delicate achievement at the junction of the road movie and the bittersweet sentimental chronicle.

Frédéric Leconte