Deborah Ross

Sting in its tale

Changeling<br /> 15, Nationwide

issue 29 November 2008

Changeling
15, Nationwide

Changeling, produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, is a most melodramatic melodrama starring Angelina Jolie and her totally amazing, bee-stung lips. (I was stung by a bee once, but on the eyelid; it didn’t look so great.) Anyway, based on a true story, it’s set in Los Angeles in 1928 and is about a single mother, Christine Collins (Jolie) whose nine-year-old son, Walter, goes missing and when returned by the police five months later, turns out not to be him at all. The police insist the boy is Walter, and insist Christine accepts him as Walter, but Christine knows he is not, just as any mother knows who is and who isn’t her son — not that the son will always want to know her. (Trust me, I’ve got a teenage boy who doesn’t want to know me at all, although it could just be the bee-stung eyelid.)

According to the poster, Jolie’s performance is ‘Oscar-assured’ — having, presumably, been inspected and approved by the International Institute of Oscar Assurances, as based in Beverly Hills — but I don’t know.

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