Director/Screenplay – Bradley Rust Gray, Producers – Karen Chien, Jen Gatien, Bradley Rust Gray & So Yong Kim, Photography – Anne Misawa, Music – Mum, Creature Design – Gabe Bartalos, Animation – Quay Brothers, Production Design – Chris Trujillo. Production Company – Deer Jen & Soanbrad Productions/A Space Between/RCR Media Group.
Cast
Juno Temple (Diane Lane/Karen Lane), Riley Keough (Jack), Cara Seymour (Aunt Linda), Kylie Minogue (Tara), Dane DeHaan (Chris), Michael Chernus (Jaimie)
Plot
Diane Lane, an English girl in New York City, wanders into a store seeking help, having lost her phone. An employee Jack comes to her aid. Jack develops a lesbian attraction to Diane and the two quickly connect. This proves of upset to Linda, the aunt that Diane stays with, when she walks in on them making out. Jack reacts badly when Linda tells her that Diane is going to school in Paris in two weeks’ time. Diane presses Jack not to give up and they reconnect. However, there are disturbing forces inside Diane.
Jack & Diane doesn’t feel like a film I should be reviewing here. It is an LGBT romance about the connection between two teenage girls. In an admirably naturalistic way, the film follows the two as they connect, are drawn apart by circumstances and misunderstandings, and then come back together again. As works on this subject go, the film does an exemplary job, featuring two fine, thoroughly convincing performances and solid, naturalistic direction.
On the other hand, this sits alongside something that seems as though it is about to turn into a Monster Movie. There are repeated cutaways to the inside of a body as strands of hair curl around sinews and veins, which has led some reviewers to label this a Werewolf Film. We do have a couple of scenes where something monstrous that is brown and lumpen appears, particularly during a scene where the two girls are briefly trapped in an attic in the dark. On the other hand, it is not clear if this is one of them turning into a monster, or that such scenes are purely allegorical and meant to represent something dark inside stirring – or even for that matter which girl the forces are stirring inside. It is entirely baffling why these scenes are there as they seem to serve no purpose, nor does anything come of them. It is an example where you feel like the film would have worked better without any fantastic content.
Lesbian romance – (l to r) Jack (Riley Keough) and Diane (Juno Temple)
Jack & Diane features standout performances from Juno Temple and Riley Keough. I was watching the film at a point when the two were much better known in other roles – Juno Temple in works like The Dark Knight Rises (2012) and tv’s Vinyl (2017) and Ted Lasso (2020- ), and Riley Keough in American Honey (2016) and The House That Jack Built (2018). The film was a revelation seeing the two here as they give performances when they were younger, less shaped by wider exposure and the Hollywood image machine. Temple is a lost waif, while Keough in particular impresses in a performance as a streetwise tomboy character. Both seem to play the parts as though they naturally lived them. Also a surprise to find is pop sensation Kylie Minogue who turns up as a tattooed woman that Riley Keough briefly hooks up with.
Jack & Diane was the third feature-length film for director/writer Bradley Rust Gray, who had previously made Salt (2003) and The Exploding Girl (2006) and the subsequent Blood (2022), all regular straight romances, while he has also visited gay attraction as director of one of the episodes of Boys Life 3 (2000) and the script for Lovesong (2016), which also starred Riley Keough.
