I love this movie so much

Fresh and Exciting

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

I just saw the movie.. It's 2017. 9 years after it was made. What is the point of this Movie? Is it to show people how terrible life can be? Or what? And what kind of wrong information has been provided ..? Like the system is against her. She's like this idiot woman who never learns.. It's thoroughly annoying with such unnecessary disgusting sex scenes and nudity! There's no taste at all. The only thing good about it was Chastain 's acting.

Orphan Jolene (Jessica Chastain) marries nerdy Mickey to get away from the foster system. They live with his Uncle Phil (Dermot Mulroney) and Aunt Kay (Theresa Russell). It's Jolene's sweet 16 and Uncle Phil takes her to bed. They have a secret affair. Kay catches them and throws her out. Mickey commits suicide and she is sent to a juvenile mental asylum. Uncle Phile is sentenced to 18 months and she catches the eye of lesbian nurse Cindy (Frances Fisher). She convinces Cindy to help her escape and then she escapes from Cindy and South Carolina forever. She continues her winding journey through the wide ranging dark side.I can't buy Chastain as a 16 year old, let alone 15. It's a problem because her relationship with Mulroney comes off as romantic when it needs to come off as creepy. It's funny when Jolene says she acts 10 years older than her age. She's actually even older than that. The first part could be compelling but her age just gets into the way.The story meanders with too many pit stops along the way. I almost gave it a pass thinking it's a true story but no! It's not. It just makes the meandering writing unforgivable. The movie should be split in two. The first part with a younger actress playing teen Jolene up to and including Cindy. Chastain can play the adult Jolene with Brad. That part is very compelling. Chastain shows her acting skills playing her role with abandon.

*** SOME SPOILERS ***This is one of those films where you're not sure what the point is. The film is based on the E.L. Doctorow story "Jolene: A Life," published in The New Yorker. You can go to their site and read the synopsis without subscribing. Interestingly enough, the synopsis is almost exactly what happens in the movie.It is all about a naive young woman who goes through 10 years of mostly torment at the hands of numerous men. She doesn't change that much over that time, and is just as bad a judge of character at the end as she was at the beginning.So, why watch this? I don't know. It is competently made, with the cinematography and (then-newcomer) Jessica Chastain's excellent performance being the highlights. Admitedly, director Dan Ireland is very faithful to the story, so maybe the problem is with Doctorow. I am not willing to subscribe to The New Yorker to read beyond the synopsis, so I am going to have to guess that the story is where the problem is. The question then would be: Why make this in the first place? I really don't know.****** (6 Out of 10 Stars)

You can certainly understand why Jessica Chastain took this role. I mean, what actress just into her 30s wouldn't? It's not only the lead in a relatively substantial production, the whole movie revolves around her character and she's on screen for almost every second of it. It's a part that goes from 15 to 25, from roadside whore to rich man's wife, from dependent little girl to supposedly independent woman. There's also a decent bit of nudity, which is sadly something many actresses need to indulge in for Tinsel Town to take notice of them. If Chastain had any hesitation about this job, I'm sure everyone from her parents to her agent to the little Korean lady at the nail salon told her that this motion picture was going to make her career. There are just two little problems. One, Jolene isn't really any good. The story is shallow and contrived and is more like a simulation of life than real existence. Two, Chastain is not the right kind female for this sort of part.This largely plot less tale is about Jolene (Jessica Chastain), a red headed girl from a life of foster parent abuse who at 15 married a young man desperate enough to take her as a bandage for his wounded heart. She almost immediately betrays him for his older smarmy uncle, which destroys everything and sends Jolene out into a cruel world that is never quite cruel enough to leave a mark on her. She passes from a lesbian guard at a juvenile mental home to a charismatic tattoo artist to a mobster to the scion of a wealthy Oklahoma family. Along the way, Jolene only gets a little bit wiser but never any more sympathetic or likable.Part of it is that the film assumes the audience will automatically identify with and root for Jolene, so it never does anything to make her any more appealing than her physical attributes. Jolene isn't all that nice and she isn't good in any meaningful sense of the word and this movie never gives the viewer any reason to emotionally invest in what happens to her. When bad things happen, it's like watching a rotting house collapse from a distance. It's momentarily diverting but you don't care about the house and you're not close enough to it to feel any danger or risk.Part of it is that Jolene does not appear to be happening in any kind of real world. The character is put in all these fake, fabricated situations that are like bad reproductions of actual things. The world has strip clubs but the one Jolene works at is classier and more refined than any strip club on Earth or any other planet. This story takes place in the present but is based on an understanding of family and divorce law that is straight out of the 1950s. And though Jolene is twice thrust into situations of great wealth after periods of practically living on the street and turning tricks to get by, she never thinks to stash any money away for herself.Part of it is that Jolene, while the center of this movie, is so passive through the very end of the story. She barely does anything. Stuff happens to her and she hardly even reacts to most of it.And as mean as it is to point out, part of it is that Jessica Chastain is not beautiful enough to make Jolene believable. The most defining characteristic of Jolene is she's supposed to be so drop dead gorgeous that lovers fall helpless at her feet. Chastain pulls that off when Jolene is 15 and radiates the sort of raw, unconscious sensuality that turns middle aged men into idiots. But as the character ages and has to lose that Lolita-like openness, it gets harder and harder to buy that Jolene is so darn irresistible. Few guys would kick Chastain out of bed for eating crackers, but she's not that good looking…or at least not that kind of good looking. In fact, if Chastain were physically stunning in her early 30s, she wouldn't have been able to convincingly play someone sexually precocious and half her age.The direction and the acting here are good enough. It's the story itself that isn't worth anyone's time. You'd be better off listening to Dolly Parton's "Jolene" than watching this.