Carolina Caroline
Samara Weaving stars as Caroline, a small town grocery worker smarter than her station but just naive enough to believe Oliver (Kyle Gallner), the charming con man who rolls into town, can provide her with a better life. Losing herself in the attraction of Oliver and the adrenaline of bigger and bigger scores, Carolina Caroline starts out as a breezy con movie romance before things start to go wrong and the consequences for the pair's actions come due.
Set around the American South in an indeterminate time before cell phones, the film weaves in themes from Southern Gothic, romance, and crime thriller genres in a script by Tom Dean and William Thomas Dean IV that, despite offering no big surprises, doesn't always go in the direction you first expect. Director Adam Rehmeier gets the best out of his two stars who largely carry the film on their own shoulders, even if Weaving's small town schtick is a little strong for me in her initial scenes.
As the film grows darker and Carolina contemplates where her actions have led her, spurred on by an interaction she's been waiting her whole life for, she posits the most basic question to her outlaw lover: are they good people pretending to be bad or bad people pretending to be good? Oliver has no answer, and its in the gray area where the two live, flourish, and then fall that the film finds its home.
- Title: Carolina Caroline
- IMDb: link
