Last night Hollywood Elsewhere sat down with Marc Turtletaub‘s Jules (Bleecker Street), a quiet little fable about a vaguely flaky, absent-minded old guy (Ben Kingsley) who gradually blooms emotionally and spiritually when a smallish flying saucer crashes into his backyard garden and a wounded, pint-sized, shiny-skinned alien (Jade Quon) crawls out and lies on his brick patio, breathing but in need of care.
Kingsley’s Milton, whose longish, carefully styled gray hair looks exactly like a professional-grade wig, is so timid and small-minded that he waits a day to start caring for the poor, dark-eyed thing, who doesn’t seem to have a gender. (Let’s use the female pronoun.) At first Milt drapes a plaid blanket over the little gal, and then takes her inside and begins offering sliced apples for sustenance, and then shows Jules the guest bedroom and invites her to chill and watch TV.
After Milt’s friend Sandy (Harriet Sansom Harris) drops by and begins to warmly relate, the alien is given the “Jules” moniker (as in Jules Pfeiffer or a nickname for Julia). Milt and Sandy quickly become Jules’ parents, and then in short order they’re being assisted by Joyce (Jane Curtin), a vaguely neurotic acquaintance who starts talking to Jules as if she’s her therapist, sharing stories of her colorful youth in Pittsburgh (“I used to be an item”) and, in an odd detour, performing Lynyrd Skynyrd‘s “Free Bird” a capella.
Immediately all kinds of E.T.-type questions pop into your head. You have to assume that with all those consumed apples that Jules would use the bathroom from time to time or at least take an occasional leak outside, but details are never shared.
In no particular order: Does Jules take showers? What does she smell like? She has a smallish mouth plus, one presumes, a tongue, teeth, lungs and vocal chords so why doesn’t she mimic Milt with a little alien English, or perhaps speak in his/her own native tongue? Why was she travelling alone? What was the point of visiting earth in the first place? Is she fundamentally a woke type or does she view the human condition with (God forbid) the mindset of a Trump supporter? Is she broken-hearted over the recent death of an alien husband or child?
All we learn is that the enterprising Jules is looking to repair her spacecraft, and that she needs a few dead cats to accomplish this. We also see that she cares a great deal for Milt, Sandy and Joyce, and woe to any scurvy characters who might threaten any of them (think David Cronenberg‘s Scanners).
