BLOOMINGTON Demand → On Demand Weekly

BLOOMINGTON DemandJune 02, 2011

On Demand Weekly provides new movie reviews of movies on demand from the POV of watching from the comfort of your home. Today’s review: BLOOMINGTON (FilmBuff).

BLOOMINGTON
By Amy Slotnick

BLOOMINGTON is a coming of age drama about Jackie, a former child actress (played by Sarah Stouffer) who attends college in the mid-west to find independence from her acting career in Los Angeles. However blending in with the student body proves to be more difficult than Jackie expects. Her peers seem to only be interested in her as a celebrity but don’t show much genuine interest in being her friend.

At a meeting for the psychology department Jackie meets Professor Catherine Stark (played by Allison McAtee), a beautiful teacher in her 30s who is rumored to seduce her students. Despite warnings from others, Jackie is quickly enamored with Catherine and without any hesitation, they begin an intense and sexual romance. Jackie leaves school for a job in LA and the distance from Catherine, complicates their relationship.

Surprisingly, Jackie shows no emotional struggle being with a woman and no concern that she is having a secret affair with a professor. Jackie may be innocent but she is not dumb and Catherine’s advances are too overt to not be viewed as suspicious.

In addition, both women sleep with men in the film and that seems to undermine the attraction between them. This might be okay if the drama exploited some tension in the relationship but overall the script feels very flat and unrealistic.

- Amy Slotnick

Amy
Amy Slotnick is a contributor to On Demand Weekly. She works as an independent producer and freelance consultant to film financing start-ups. Previously she was a Senior VP of Production at Miramax Films.