White Oleander

White Oleander (2002) is an American motion picture drama directed by Peter Kosminsky. The cast features Alison Lohman in the central role of Astrid Magnussen, and Michelle Pfeiffer as her temperamental mother Ingrid, alongside Robin Wright Penn, Renée Zellweger, Billy Connolly and Patrick Fugit in supporting roles.

The screenplay was adapted from the novel of the same name by Janet Fitch, which was selected for Oprah's Book Club in 1999.

Young Astrid is very close to her single mother, Ingrid (Michelle Pfieffer) whose free-spirited, semi-man-hating lifestyle is all well and good until Ingrid meets and eventually poisons Barry Kolker, a man who romances and then spurns Ingrid. When Astrid's mother goes to prison for the murder, Astrid is left bouncing around foster care and increasingly wondering if her mother's parenting was really very good in the first place. She lives with all different types of families from Born-again Christians to posh to a youth detention center. As she grows older, she recognizes how her mother's manipulative personality has caused her most all of her life's grief. She is forced to really soul search and is left with more questions than answers, including why her mother committed the murder.

Tropes used in White Oleander include:
  • Abusive Parents: Ingrid qualifies as emotionally abusive. The foster parents also qualify for physical abuse. Arguably, Astrid also suffers sexual abuse at Ray's hands, though he is not technically her foster parent (just her foster mother's boyfriend) and Astrid is consenting though underage.
  • Adaptation Dye Job: As noted below, Claire goes from a brunette in the novel to blonde in the film.
  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Ray, Starr's boyfriend, goes from a graying, overweight, 50-ish carpenter who is missing three fingers in the novel to a 30-ish(at most) rugged pretty boy played by Cole Hauser in the film. Paul Trout might be this as well, as he is explicitly stated to be ugly in the novel, and he's played by Patrick Fugit in the film.
  • Alcoholic Parent: Starr is this to her biological children and an Alcoholic Foster Parent to Astrid and the other kids she fosters. She starts out in recovery, but goes off the rails when she thinks Astrid is sleeping with Ray. Claire shows shades of this in the novel toward the end of her appearance, since a bottle of sherry never leaves her side during Astrid's final weeks there.
  • All Abusers Are Male: Averted, Astrid is abused by more women than men.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Pretty much why Astrid slept with Sergei in the novel. She grows out of it.
  • Anti-Hero: It could be argued that Astrid is a Type III.
  • Asshole Victim: Barry did lead Ingrid on, to the point she and her daughter believed the relationship to be lasting.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Astrid gets her answers from Ingrid and begins living her own life, but is dirt poor and has nothing to her name save the suitcases she's constructed as memorials to her time with her mother and her time in foster care. More of a Downer Ending in the novel, as Astrid's narration toward the end implies she has learned nothing from any of it.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead: Kind of, in Astrid's final foster home. She's the blonde, Yvonne is a brunette, and Nikki has dyed magenta hair.
  • Blue Eyes: Astrid and Ingrid in the novel, though Ingrid's are mentioned more and Astrid's are so dark as to border on Black Eyes.
  • Break the Cutie: Astrid.
  • Calling The Old Lady Out: Astrid does this during her final visit to Ingrid in prison.
  • Con Man: Sergei is this in the novel, presumably in the film as well, though it's never mentioned.
  • Coming of Age Story
  • A Date with Rosie Palms: In the novel, Astrid does this while listening to Starr and Ray have sex.
  • Dawson Casting: In the film, Astrid goes from 15 to 18, and was played by then 22 year old Alison Lohman.
  • Disappeared Dad: Astrid's father left when she was either six months old (film) or two years old (novel).
  • Department of Child Disservices: Both the book and film are made of this, though the book goes into more detail.
  • Driven to Suicide: Claire.
  • Everyone Loves Blondes: Astrid and three/four out of six mothers (Ingrid, Starr, Marvel (book character), and Claire (Film only, in the novel she was brunette and looked like Audrey Hepburn).
  • Freud Was Right: See below under Parental Incest.
  • Gratuitous Foreign Language: the novel has a lot of this, bordering on Bilingual Bonus. Astrid uses several languages in one line, during the scene where she and Nikki go to the museum after dropping acid. Among others, we have:
  • Hair of Gold: Other characters make a lot of fuss about Ingrid and Astrid's hair in the novel.
  • High-Class Call Girl: Olivia Johnstone, a woman who lives next door to one of Astrid's foster homes, is this in the novel.
  • Hollywood California: the novel takes place in Los Angeles county.
  • Inner-City School: Several of the schools Astrid attends over the course of the novel are implied to be this, particularly Fairfax High.
  • Jail Bait: Astrid is this for Ray.
  • Karma Houdini: Starr possibly gets away with shooting Astrid in the novel, since she runs off, though both novel and film have elements of a What Happened to the Mouse? situation. In the novel, Amelia Ramos gets away with starving the girls she fosters, though Astrid gets out. Ingrid ultimately gets away with murder in the novel. It's only insinuated she does the same in the film.
  • Miscarriage of Justice: The two college girls who visit Astrid at Rena's believe this about Ingrid. She tells them otherwise.
  • Multiple Choice Past: part of the reason Astrid confronts Ingrid.
  • No Periods, Period: Averted in the novel when Astrid mentions that she stopped having her period due to being starved by a foster parent. Played straight in the film.
  • Norse Mythology: Astrid and Ingrid mention this a bit in the novel. Since they're Scandinavian, it makes sense.
  • Parental Abandonment: In spades. Astrid's dad is a Disappeared Dad, Ingrid is eventually Astrid's Missing Mom(twice: First when she left Astrid with a babysitter for a year when she was much younger, and the prison stint is the second time), and Astrid's foster mother Claire, the one she admits she loved the most, commits suicide after her husband leaves her.
  • Parental Neglect: Ingrid to Astrid.
  • Parental Incest: While this doesn't actually happen in the literal sense, in the novel both Astrid and Ingrid repeatedly refer to Astrid's relationship with (significantly) older men as 'laying down for the father.' Make of that what you will.
  • Parents as People: Ingrid.
  • Parent with New Paramour: Ingrid and Barry, till he leaves her and she kills him.
  • Perfect Poison: Averted in the novel. Astrid mentions her mother boiling down a whole bunch of oleanders and other poisonous plants in her quest to kill Barry.
  • Plot Hole: People who only watched the film can be forgiven for not knowing how Ingrid kills Barry or why she needed DMSO.
  • Pragmatic Adaptation: Upping Astrid's age (presumably due to the Ray subplot) and removing two foster homes.
  • Really Gets Around: Ingrid before Barry and prison, though it's portrayed positively and seems like more of a twisted Ethical Slut situation (justified, as it's seen though Astrid's eyes and at that point, Astrid worshiped her mother). Astrid weaves in and out of this through the novel.
  • Resentful Guardian: Ingrid admits she's this to Astrid during Astrid's Calling the Old Man Out scene.
  • Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Astrid is arguably a female example, though it's complicated.
  • Shallow Love Interest: In the novel, Paul Trout is into comics and Astrid, and that's about it, even after she leaves California and lives with him. He's given a little more to do in the film, but not much.
  • Spicy Latina: There are a few of these characters throughout the novel, but Yvonne is given the most face-time.
  • Sympathetic Criminal: Ingrid is apparently this to her many devotees.
  • Title Drop: Half-example: In the novel Astrid frequently mentions her mother boiling down oleanders when she poisoned Barry.
  • Too Good for This Sinful Earth: A Zig-Zagging Trope in regards to Claire.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?: Somewhat of a Justified Trope, since Astrid is in foster care. However, Starr shooting Astrid is a very jarring example- it's never mentioned after Astrid leaves the home (and you think it would be, since y'know, the main character just got shot!, but it's not a large enough incident (in terms of the scope of the novel and film, both of which are pretty vast for their mediums) to constitute Aborted Arc.
  • White-Haired Pretty Girl: Astrid's hair is so blonde as to border on this.
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