Little Pink House details the prosaic, political, legislative and legal events that led to the U.S. Supreme Court case, Kelo v. City of New London. It is marketed as an Erin Brockovich type biography of the plaintiff, Susette Kelo, who is played by Catherine Keener, as a working class resident forced to defend her home and neighbors from a patronizing governmental response to a real demand for jobs that actually only benefits and responds to the needs of a corporation, Pfizer Inc. This film is an adaptation of a book with the same title written by Jeff Benedict, which I may read.
I saw the trailer for Little Pink House and wanted to see it in theaters. I even tried to get mom to see it during its brief run for one week at one theater then a second week at a different one, but mom saved me some money and regret by expressing interest in seeing it on DVD. Even though a woman wrote and directed this movie, it shows some misogynistic impulses in its portrait of Kelo and its attempt to make a woman the lead villain, Charlotte Wells, who is played by Jeanne Tripplehorn. To be fair, because I have not read the book yet, it could be a faithful adaptation of the book, but even if it was, I would hope that a woman filmmaker would have gone deeper in her depiction of two women instead of resting on tropes to categorize one woman as good and the other as bad.
Little Pink House initially seems to be a story of two strong women, each with unique flaws, who start from opposite realms of power each on a collision course with the other. Kelo is restarting her life at the bottom, renovating her home and getting established in her new community, which has seen better times. Charlotte is a polished, powerful academic and mover and shaker in the corridors of government. I want to be clear. I’m on Kelo’s side in terms of legal analysis and sympathy, but an interesting movie makes you like and empathize with the person on the other side while still disagreeing with her. Maybe Charlotte is as awful as she is depicted, but I feel as if Marcia Gay Harden would have done a better job of bringing nuance to this caricature, especially if you recall her performance in Grandma when you hear so many awful things about her, but when you finally meet her, you like her. Tripplehorn seems to agree with the assessment that her character is as awful as everyone says. When guys are remote and don’t consider the human factor, they are called focused and driven, not cold. It was really disappointing and reductive to never get more than a superficial, outsider’s view of Charlotte.
In the end, Little Pink House’s narrative falls apart because Charlotte is not the real villain although she is the face of the opposition. Once she is removed from the picture, Kelo loses her foil and really has no one to tango with so if the filmmaker knows that is going to happen, why set up the opposing woman track at all except that it is easier to villainize a woman even if there is a governor who will end up in jail by the end of the movie.
Somehow Little Pink House ends up making Kelo sidelined and a spectator in her own film. I have no problem shifting focus to the legal drama, but perhaps the earlier focus should have been on more characters than the two women so when they are sidelined, it feels less disconcerting. Also there is a scene during a demolition of a neighboring house when one of the characters screams, “Can’t you see that she (Kelo) is right here (on her porch, not in the path of the construction vehicles)?!?” and demands that they stop, which they do because she is (understandably) upset and crying. Why? For real, they are wily nilly trying to take everyone’s property, but they will accede to demands to stop doing something elsewhere because it is upsetting her. I don’t think so. Either the movie failed at showing why the vehicles should stop, or it was a naked ploy for sympathy by making her briefly a damsel in distress. It had the opposite effect on me and left me cold. Kelo becomes a hysterical woman in need of protection and advice from men.
Little Pink House also suffers from oversimplification of what is good (blue collar, poor, unkempt, appealing to men) and bad (elite, well-educated and perfectly coiffed). There is one great shot when the movie cuts from Kelo’s boyfriend eating a slice of pizza to Charlotte dining on lobster. These images may instinctually work on a primal level, but not for long, especially when the alleged elite villain is going to disappear. Instead this movie missed the opportunity to reframe this story as part of a continuum in American (and perhaps world) history of fictional people, i.e. corporations, using the government to further enrich itself at the expense of actual people, human beings. During the town hall confrontation between Charlotte and Kelo, it felt like they were talking around each other instead of to each other, which was possibly accurate, but a movie has the space to really engage in a more textured dialogue than would unfold in real life. This movie is not a documentary. Why are we pretending that Charlotte’s schtick does not have good points in different contexts and just dismiss it? Such dismissiveness weakens the point of the other side by simply relegating it to emotion.
Little Pink House occasionally had some bright moments such as the impromptu nonviolent protest by the mayor and his wife. The most germane aspect of the town hall confrontation is when Kelo says, “While we’ll be keeping it civil, you’ll be stealing our homes,” which is a frustration experienced in political discourse now. People can legally and actively try to hurt you, but if you hurt their feelings, you’re the problem. I appreciated the attempt to make the point that lower income people are being forced out of enjoying nature and beauty, but it is unevenly made throughout the movie. It feels clunky rather than transcendent and fails to resonate as strongly as it should.
In the end, I think that Little Pink House isn’t worth your time. Like a lot of American movies, it is more concerned with audiences feeling triumphant instead of being faithful to the tone of the outcome. Kelo lost! Even though the movie leaves us with real life images and a written explanation of what happened, I was enraged by the attempt to sugarcoat the nightmare of what just unfolded in the fictional end of the movie. Viewers should leave this movie feeling shaken and concerned, but instead we get some pablum about how they will never stop fighting and the endurance of the human spirit. When we see the real life Kelo, she does not seem as optimistic though determined. This movie is a tone-deaf insult to our intelligence, and this pivotal moment deserved better cinematic treatment.
Side note: Little Pink House also features the worst depiction of the Supreme Court in session that I have ever seen in my life. The only one cast who seemed remotely like their real life counterpart was Eileen Barrett, and she only sounded like Ginsburg. Did they even try?