My dad never seemed to have much interest in what I did during my leisure time while I was in high school. Granted, he didn't need to--I was by any standards of classification a geek and a bookworm and by disposition practically incapable of getting into trouble--but he justified his laissez faire attitude by stating that there was only so much trouble his boys could get into. With the girls, though--that was another story.
Chauvanist as this attitude is, there's a truth to it that any feminist--pick your wave--has to admit. Girls can get into a particular kind of trouble that boys can't get into. Of course, both male and female parties need to be involved for this kind of trouble to occur, but the boy has the option of cut-and-run. The girl doesn't.
Enter Juno, with a unique twist on this theme: it's the girl who wants to cut-and-run (in her own particular coming-to-term way) and the boy who, though he might not know what he wants, doesn't want to cut out. The reason it has taken me so long to get around to seeing this film has to do precisely with the subject matter of the film: I, like the male lead in this film, got a girl pregnant. Unlike Michael Sera's sweet-natured and bumbling Paulie, I am older and married (though still bumbling), and the woman I got pregnant was my wife. In fact, I have gotten her pregnant twice, and the product of the first such undertaking is a two-year-old who makes going to see witty and charming films like Juno virtually impossible.
The younger product (who won't be born until June) went with us to the movie and must have absorbed it with interest, albeit indirectly. Based on post-film discussion, I'd say that the film fired off some powerful responses in my wife and that some of this response must have taken the form of hormonal transmission to the little bird inside her belly. It was, for us, a film that was poignant in ways that it could not be for many other viewers.
What struck me about the film wasn't really the kids, who were perfectly endearing and harmless in their own way, but the adults. In particular, the film has three relationships: Juno (Ellen Page, as if you haven't heard) and Paulie, Vanessa and Mark (the adoptive parents, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman), and Juno's dad Mac and his wife Bren (J.K. Simmons and Allison Jannie). Juno and Paulie are convincing enough on screen but outside the world of the film rather improbable. Real teens aren't as witty as Juno and no one at any age (outside of Wes Anderson films) is capable of the blend of ironic-cool and naivete that Paulie embodies. (Paulie's a geek but cooler than he knows: he's totally retro and he plays guitar.) Despite their departure from the wholly realistic, Juno and Paulie are convincingly developed, which is what we expect out of good characterization. Vanessa and Mark, by contrast, are mostly foils for the younger couple: they're stereotypes of the suburban couple carried to an extreme, not entirely unrealistic but not entirely real, either. Nevertheless, the sting of the satire is there: Mark, the adult, who is supposed to be mature by virtue of his age and station, does the cut-and-run at the prospect of becoming a father; Vanessa, who has Pottery Barned to the max their house in the remote burbs, seems caught up in appearances, but her heart is golden. If the film has a message, it's that someone who wants to be a parent should be a parent, and that someone who doesn't shouldn't be.
The other relationship that sticks for me is not so much Mac and Bren as it is Mac and Juno. Mac's marriage to Bren is a second for Mac; Juno's mother cut-and-ran (thematic parallel observed) years ago. Toward the end of the film, Mac tells Juno (rather like the protagonist of a late Shakespearean play, one where the mother is seemingly nonexistent) that the relationship that will last is his fatherly love for her. This is a bit of a change from his initial response, when he tells Juno that he thought she was the kind of girl who knew when to say when. Mac's kinder words got to me because, like those Shakespeare plays, they say so much about what it means to be a parent. Mac faces the reality of a daughter in a predicament. I face the uncertainty of the very, very young/not-yet-born. I don't know what my kids are going to do. I'm hoping for the best, ready for anything.
A couple of months ago, Caitlin Flanagan, who writes thoughtful and challenging pieces for The Atlantic Monthly about issues affecting teenage girls, called Juno a "fairy tale" in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. I can sum up the fairy tale so: girl meets boy, girl gets pregnant, girl decides to give the child away, girl does so, and girl meets boy again and they go on with their happy, carefree teenage lives. Juno is a fairy tale then in depicting an improbable but ideal outcome that defies statistical fact in the lives of teenage girls, but not so in its depiction of the lives of adults. The fact of the matter is, nothing can prepare you for parenthood except the wish to be a parent, and Juno gets that right.
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