Dermot Mulroney, Donald Sutherland, Michael Vartan, Denise Richards, Rupert Friend and Theresa Russell have all found their way into Jolene for Dan Ireland. The film is based on E.L. Doctorow’s tale “Jolene: A Life,” from the 2004 collection “Sweet Land Stories” and will be shooting in Arizona.
The story centers on a red-haired heroine (newcomer Jessica Chastain) whose cross-country adventures beginning at age 15 are tracked over the course of a decade.
I am not sure how others took the tale, but Kevin Baker of The Washington Post wasn’t exactly ecstatic about it when he wrote:
“Jolene: A Life” reads something like a bad country-western song, with one heart-wrenching cliché after another perpetrated upon its young heroine, Doctorow seems to be suggesting that many American lives are nothing but second acts today: an exhausting treadmill of reinventions, recoveries, remarriages and divorces.
Perhaps it works better as a movie, we’ll soon see.
