Themes: Mothers and Daughters, Sexual Awakening, Suburban Dysfunction
Main Cast: Sam Rockwell, Christopher McDonald, Kathleen Quinlan, Bruce McGill, Mischa Barton
Release Year: 1997
Country: UK
Run Time: 120 minutes
Plot
A young girl finds friendship on the wrong side of the career tracks in this drama. Camelot Gardens is a "gated community" where wealthy people can purchase luxurious (if sterile) homes and a security force ensures that riffraff will be kept away from your door after nightfall. The Stockard family are new arrivals at Camelot Gardens; father Morton (Christopher McDonald) is a businessman who wants to go into politics, while mother Clare (Kathleen Quinlan) busies herself with affairs with younger men. Neither seems to have much time for their 10-year-old daughter Devon (Mischa Barton), who doesn't care for children her own age; Devon's uncle likes to entertain her with stories about a witch named Baba Yaga who lives in the forest, so one day she wanders into the nearby woods looking for Baba. Instead, she finds a trailer that's home to Trent (Sam Rockwell), a 20-something free spirit who scrapes together a living by mowing the lawns of Camelot Gardens. Devon and Trent both have physical and emotional scars to deal with, and they soon become friends and confidantes; however, Devon's parents become upset when they learn that their daughter's best friend is a grown man, particularly one who lives in a trailer and does lawn maintenance for a living. Lawn Dogs won awards at a number of international film festivals in 1997, including the Stockholm Film Festival, the Montreal World Film Festival, and the Catalonian International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Review
A ten-year-old girl bonding with a psychologically damaged veteran who lives in a trailer in the woods may sound like a recipe for something sappy, or, worse, something kinky. Naomi Wallace's script and John Duigan's direction steer clear of those extremes. Devon Stockard, played by the remarkable Mischa Barton, is well aware that her striving, glad-handing parents (Chris McDonald and Kathleen Quinlan) are also hypocrites of the first order. Arriving in a new neighborhood, a suburban enclave filled with big sterile homes and perfectly manicured lawns devoid of any evidence of children, Devon retreats into her own world -- an early scene of her crawling out onto the roof to sing to the night sky sums that up neatly. Not surprisingly, Devon fastens onto the scruffy Trent Burns, sensing an adult who is both kind and honest. Sam Rockwell plays Trent, who is a darker version of The Kid character he played in Box of Moonlight; both are trailer-dwelling loners, but Trent is more in fearful retreat from the world than in defiant rebellion against it. The film allows these two souls to find some pleasure and solace in each other's company, even as we sense that their relationship can't last, once her parents learn of it. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Ronna Kress - Casting, David Rubin - Co-producer, John Dunn - Costume Designer, Michael Samson - First Assistant Director, John Duigan - Director, Humphrey Dixon - Editor, Ron Daniels - Executive Producer, Amy J. Kaufman - Line Producer, John Myhre - Production Designer, Elliot Davis - Cinematographer, Duncan Kenworthy - Producer, James Edward Ferrell, Jr. - Set Designer, Michael Barosky - Sound/Sound Designer, Naomi Wallace - Screenwriter, Anne Gordon - Animal Trainer/Wrangler
The term "lawn dog" refers to someone who mows lawns, and the main character, Trent Burns (Rockwell), is doing just that when he meets a lonely 10-year-old girl, Devon Stockard (Barton), who comes from a wealthy family, in suburban Louisville, Kentucky, that has isolated her. Trent lives in a trailer in the woods, and Devon lives in a gated community.
The pair strike up an adventurous friendship, which is later misunderstood by the townspeople, who begin to suspect that Trent is a child molester. Ironically, one of Trent's adversaries is, but Trent is not. The film is a somewhat critical view of exurban growth and the impact they may have on the original rural residents, and in one sense a fairy tale of a 'gated' America, where class hostility and suspicion are the true fuel for violence.
