Manny and Lo movie storyline. Two sisters, 11-year-old Amanda (nicknamed Manny) and 16-year-old Laurel (nicknamed Lo), run away from several foster homes, sleeping wherever they can, including in model homes. But when Lo becomes pregnant, the two find that they can’t make it through this crisis on their own. With nowhere else to turn, they decided to kidnap Elaine, a clerk at a baby supply store. But it seems that Elaine just may need Manny and Lo as much as they need her.
Manny & Lo is a 1996 comedy-drama film directed by Lisa Krueger, starring Scarlett Johansson, Aleksa Palladino, Mary Kay Place, Dean Silvers, Marlen Hecht, FoMelissa Johnson, Tyler Silvers, Lisa Campion, Susan Decker and Melissa Johnson.
Film Review for Manny & Lo
At the start of Lisa Krueger’s stirring debut feature, the story’s two young heroines are introduced as Manny (Scarlett Johansson) and Lo (Aleksa Palladino) and seen waking up on a lawn in a soulless suburban development, which they mistook for a park the night before. By the film’s end, these two have turned into Amanda and Laurel, and they are in a real park, in a tranquil wilderness. What changed? Everything. How? Therein lies a lovely tale.
With the utmost warmth and clarity, “Manny and Lo” watches these two lost girls take charge of their fate. Motherless sisters who have fled their foster homes, the precocious 11-year-old Manny and her wanton 16-year-old sibling have learned to live on the run. They furtively sleep in model houses, where the decor trumpets a domestic stability these girls never knew. They shoplift groceries, pausing to study pictures of runaways on milk cartons. “We just stuck to Lo’s No. 1 rule,” says Manny, who narrates the story. “Keep moving and you won’t get nailed.”
But Lo does get nailed. And she develops one of those weight problems that won’t go away, no matter how insistently she ignores it. Eventually this sullen teen-ager must face the insurmountable fact of her pregnancy. And she and Manny must try settling down, breaking into a remote vacation house where they can stay for a while. As a further move toward grown-up responsibility, Manny visits a store that sells baby furnishings. Something about the clerk and her authoritative, motherly advice instantly seizes Manny’s imagination.
“Did you ever dream about someone before you saw them in life?” Manny asks in voice-over. Surely Elaine (Mary Kay Place) must come straight out of Manny’s lonely dreams. Dressed as a nurse, with her hair in a prim red beehive, she radiates such competence and kindness that the girls are transfixed. And since they are used to taking whatever they need in life, these two smart scavengers adopt a similar approach to this mother surrogate. They kidnap her.
So “Manny and Lo” turns into a triangle, connecting three female characters at three drastically different stages of life. Manny is watchful and wary, still very young; Lo is angrily on the verge of motherhood and worried about loss of freedom. Elaine is past the point of hoping for a family of her own. There’s something very odd about Elaine, who is played with wonderful wit and precision by Ms. Place, but the particulars of her past don’t matter. What matters is that each of this story’s touching, meticulously drawn characters gets a second chance.
Ms. Krueger, who developed her film at the Sundance Institute, knows better than to overload or belabor this slender premise. Her story’s thoughts about family and womanliness are clear without becoming forced, and her film works well on the level of narrative alone. Choosing sharply resonant details (like the childbirth video the sisters find in their hideaway, a house that has a deliberate Goldilocks atmosphere), she also elicits fine, subtle performances from all three of her stars. The two young actresses are exceptionally assured, and Ms. Place makes herself funny and heartbreaking in equal measure.
With her feet bound, her steps mincing and her manner ludicrously genteel, Ms. Place’s Elaine almost verges on caricature. But the film reveals her as enormously poignant, a guarded woman who hasn’t quite lived up to the arch-feminine attitudes she swears by. Angry at the girls at first (she refers to them as “people in your position: captors”), Elaine eventually finds herself unable to resist trying to solve their problems. “If you two benefit in the process,” she says grudgingly, “well, that can’t be helped.”
But help is the very essence of Ms. Krueger’s generous film: help within families and between generations, life-altering help from strangers. Understated, told without a trace of saccharine, shot and scored with quiet elegance, “Manny and Lo” builds gently toward a fable’s happy ending. It’s the kind of story that leaves viewers with a warm glow.
Manny and Lo (1996)
Directed by: Lisa Krueger
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Aleksa Palladino, Mary Kay Place, Dean Silvers, Marlen Hecht, FoMelissa Johnson, Tyler Silvers, Lisa Campion, Susan Decker, Melissa Johnson
Screenplay by: Lisa Krueger
Production Design by: Sharon Lomofsky
Cinematography by: Tom Krueger
Film Editing by: Colleen Sharp
Costume Design by: Jennifer Parker
Set Decoration by: Dina Goldman
Music by: John Lurie
MPAA Rating: R for language.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: July 26, 1996
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