Starring Natalie Portman, Ashley Judd, Stockard Channing
Director Matt Williams
Category IIA
Natalie Portman plays the role of pregnant 17-year-old Novalee Nation, who has never had a real home. While travelling from Tennessee to California with her boyfriend, she is left in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart store. Alone and broke, Novalee has no choice but to stay in this small town, where fate has dropped her.
While Where The Heart Is is not an intentional follow-up to Portman's role of Mathilda, the little girl saved by an assassin in 1994's Leon: The Professional, it is easy to connect the two characters. (I wanted to so I could see what happened to Mathilda!) Where The Heart Is certainly tries hard to keep the audience entertained, what with some romance, a natural disaster, tests of friendship and so on. Despite all this effort, though, it doesn't really give us what we want: it's neither exciting enough to be a blockbuster nor quirky enough to be arthouse. Where The Heart Is somehow gets lost between the two.
Where The Heart Is is screening at UA cinemas and AMC Festival Walk.