The first thing that strikes you about Juno is that there is hardly any background score. I mean there are songs and the lead character is part of a band in school. But when Juno announces to her parents that she is pregnant, you are treated to normal sounds of her pacing around the room. Another place where she breaks down in the car and you are hearing traffic sounds.
A well written script that hardly lets you feel the "normal" emotions that films line up with a subject such as this. Juno's reaction when she finds out that she is pregnant is that she is stunned but she does not really break down - just gets back home to call her close friend. From then on you are constantly surprised by the reactions of those around her. They are surprised (parents), embarrassed, guilty (boyfriend), amused (classmates) but all of them behave in a muted way.
The film then takes an interesting turn when the girl decides to give away her child to a well to do suburban couple. The scene where she meets them for the first time with her father is funny. As their car drives past a series of suburban houses the film jumps from normal comedy to a comment on the class divide in America. The entire scene with the cautious lawyer and the tentative adopted parents contrasted with Juno's behavior killed me to laughter. The other scene was the Asian girl picketing the abortion clinic. She keeps saying - Every Baby wants to be Borned.
Years ago, Preity Zinta proved her acting credentials in Kya Kehna (where she has a child from a boyfriend) but her character suffers so much in the film that you were left wondering that whether it was possible for a single woman to ever keep her child. Juno does not really go there. It is not a big problem that the girl is having her baby. What is important is what she is going thru. In that sense the film strikes a new ground. Juno actually realizes that she is in love with the guy she slept with in the first place.
The film ends up with almost everyone happier than before. Juno hooks up with the love of her life. Her parents are happy that they are over this crisis. Her step mother has new dogs for pets. The adoptive couple break up but the wife decides to keep the child.
But as the camera pulls away in the end with Juno jamming with her boyfriend the scene was too perfect. A little too perfect. Can life for a 16 year old actually be like that? Or is it just that movies make us feel like that?
A well written script that hardly lets you feel the "normal" emotions that films line up with a subject such as this. Juno's reaction when she finds out that she is pregnant is that she is stunned but she does not really break down - just gets back home to call her close friend. From then on you are constantly surprised by the reactions of those around her. They are surprised (parents), embarrassed, guilty (boyfriend), amused (classmates) but all of them behave in a muted way.
The film then takes an interesting turn when the girl decides to give away her child to a well to do suburban couple. The scene where she meets them for the first time with her father is funny. As their car drives past a series of suburban houses the film jumps from normal comedy to a comment on the class divide in America. The entire scene with the cautious lawyer and the tentative adopted parents contrasted with Juno's behavior killed me to laughter. The other scene was the Asian girl picketing the abortion clinic. She keeps saying - Every Baby wants to be Borned.
Years ago, Preity Zinta proved her acting credentials in Kya Kehna (where she has a child from a boyfriend) but her character suffers so much in the film that you were left wondering that whether it was possible for a single woman to ever keep her child. Juno does not really go there. It is not a big problem that the girl is having her baby. What is important is what she is going thru. In that sense the film strikes a new ground. Juno actually realizes that she is in love with the guy she slept with in the first place.
The film ends up with almost everyone happier than before. Juno hooks up with the love of her life. Her parents are happy that they are over this crisis. Her step mother has new dogs for pets. The adoptive couple break up but the wife decides to keep the child.
But as the camera pulls away in the end with Juno jamming with her boyfriend the scene was too perfect. A little too perfect. Can life for a 16 year old actually be like that? Or is it just that movies make us feel like that?
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