Turn the River

You can almost smell the clammy atmosphere inside the New York pool hall to which Kailey Sullivan (Famke Janssen), a tough cookie from upstate, periodically repairs to regain her bearings in “Turn the River.” Kailey, who has served time in prison, is a card shark and pool hustler who lives by her wits and exists in a state of such high anxiety that stress makes her retch.
The hall is managed by her gruff, kindly mentor, Quinette (Rip Torn), who lets her sleep on a pool table and scares up potentially profitable games for her. It is also a drop-off point for letters Kailey exchanges with her 11-year-old son, Gulley (Jaymie Dornan), whom she gave up at birth after the collapse of a disastrous early marriage. Gulley attends a Roman Catholic boys’ school in the city, and mother and son arrange secret, emotionally fraught meetings in Central Park.
The first feature film written and directed by Chris Eigeman, “Turn the River” is not what you might expect from this actor best known for his roles in “Gilmore Girls” and in Whit Stillman’s elegiac examinations of ’80s blueblood manners on the Upper East Side. Nor does it have any relationship, stylistic or otherwise, to the “X-Men” movies, in which Ms. Janssen plays Jean Grey.
Kailey is a less extreme example of the kind of role embraced by beautiful women (like Charlize Theron as the serial killer Aileen Wuornos in “Monster”) to break out of the glamour-girl straitjacket and prove they can act. Although Kailey is still beautiful, she is weather-beaten and without apparent vanity. Nowhere in the movie does she use feminine wiles to coax favors from men, although one male friend who hangs around the pool hall, Markus (Terry Kinney), is obviously smitten with her. Such is her tainted aura that when she wins $100 from an arrogant college boy in a pool match, he flies into a fury and socks her in the face.
At a rendezvous with Gulley, the boy shows up with a broken arm. His evasive answers lead Kailey to suspect that his father, David (Matt Ross), a successful real estate agent she hasn’t seen in more than a decade, has been physically abusive. The moment David appears in the film, he emits the same furtive explosiveness as Alby Grant, Mr. Ross’s character in the HBO series “Big Love.” His new wife, Ellen (Marin Hinkle), walks on eggshells. The movie’s most ominous scenes show this tense, enraged man itching for a fight with his son at the dinner table while interrogating him about his school day.
The source of David’s rage is immediately clear when his domineering, devoutly churchgoing mother, Abby (Lois Smith), pays a visit and treats him like a disobedient child. The movie’s portrait of a straitlaced Catholic family passing down heavy psychological baggage rings dreadfully true.
When Kailey conceives a plan to pluck Gulley out of school and flee with him across the Canadian border, he eagerly agrees to it. But the price of false documentation, according to Markus, who can secure it, is $50,000. The only way she can come up with the cash is by winning some high-stakes pool matches, which Quinette agrees to help her find. In a move that eventually throws the movie off its track and points it toward shrill melodrama, Kailey also demands a gun.
Until it transforms into an improbable thriller, “Turn the River” is a finely observed portrait of a desperate working-class woman who refuses to play by ordinary rules. It programmatically plays down the suspense during the ultimate contest, which pits Kailey against Duncan (John Juback), a canny, seasoned pool hustler adept at mind games.
At the point it shifts gear, however, “Turn the River” becomes a jerky, desultory chase movie in which Kailey’s solidity crumbles, and she seems increasingly unhinged; the last third of the movie is almost a different, and much weaker, film.
Da The New York Times, 9 Maggio 2008