Brenda Blethyn & Cherie Nowlan, San Francisco, CA, 6/25 2007
The battle of the sexes takes a decidedly different turn in INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS, and so when I talked with its star, Brenda Blethyn, and its director, Cherie Nowlan on June 25, 2007, how men and women react to the film was top of my list of things to ask them. Along the way, Blethyn bragged about her skill driving buses, and Nowlan voiced relief about making the film she envisioned, and they both waxed eloquent about the lure of show biz.
Brenda Blethyn turns in another scathingly brilliant performance as Jean in INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS. She’s almost famous stand up comedian at the end of a long, downhill slide to oblivion. Brassy, charming when she wants to be, bitchy when she doesn’t, she spends days as a short-order cook and nights playing one-night-stands with material 30 years out of date with nothing but a shopworn kind of charisma, headstrong dreams, and a lot of lip gloss to keep her going. That’s the background, the real meat of the film is her relationship with her sons, particularly Tim, a 20-year-old virgin whom Jean keeps firmly under her thumb with a peculiar combination of no boundaries and emotional undermining done with a smile. It all falls apart when Tim meets Miss right and Jean, unwilling to let him go turns the situation into an emotional tug of war with Tim that is by turns infuriating, farcical, unexpectedly tender, and dangerously intense.. INTRODUCING THE DWIGHTS never settles for caricature, instead it, and Blethyn, make this a gripping drama of hopes and frustrations and making peace with both.
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