Now on DVD: Monte Carlo
: Whenever he can, Bezucha will linger on a moment like this, letting his affection for the characters determine the shape of the film.Grace and Emma have made plans to visit Paris to celebrate Grace’s high school graduation, but her stepfather complicates things by demanding that her stepsister Meg (Leighton Meester) accompany them. Meg’s a high-strung college student who’s been mourning her mother’s death for some time—she and Grace don’t get along well, and she’s openly contemptuous of Emma, a high school dropout with delusions of becoming a model. Yet Bezucha doesn’t present Meg as a bitch or a scold—instead, she’s a fragile young woman whose cold persona hides a real sadness.
Perhaps she learned about evasion from her father. In his one major scene of the film, Robert (Brett Cullen, a television actor with the blandly assuring demeanor of a Hanes underwear model) springs the idea of Meg joining Grace and Emma’s trip the way a lot of suburban dads would: by pretending that spending money will solve deep-seated problems. Before presenting Grace and Meg with fancy luggage and telling them he’s upgraded their airfare to business class, he says, “I thought you two would go to France together and . . . kick this sisterhood thing into high gear!” It’s a plausible mix of cluelessness and concern, the sort of detail a lesser movie wouldn’t recognize.
