The early films of Natasha Lyonne
Everyone Says I Love You, But I'm a Cheerleader, Slums of Beverly Hills, American Pie
Everyone Says I Love You
directed by Woody Allen (1997)
Slums of Beverly Hills
directed by Tamara Jenkins (1998)
But I'm a Cheerleader
directed by Jamie Babbit (1999)
American Pie
directed by Paul and Chris Weitz (1999)
Charmed by her recent television series Russian Doll (Netflix, 2 seasons, 2018 and 2021) and Poker Face (Peacock, 1 season, 2023), I wanted to look back to the first years of the career of Natasha Lyonne. She began as a child actress, graduating to playing teenagers within a couple of years of her own age when she was 17-21 years old.
Everyone Says I Love You (1997)
She made her first impression when she was cast as a central -- if not important -- character by Woody Allen for his 1997 film "Everyone Says I Love You." She plays the daughter of the Woody Allen character (I wrote in my notes "N.L. plays Allen's daughter -- THANK GOD") and stepdaughter of the Alan Alda one. From this vantage point, she narrates the story -- you can't really call it a plot -- in which most of the adults romance new partners, break up with them, sometimes get back together, all the while living fabulously affluent lives on Park Avenue and in Paris, with a vacation in Venice. As with all Woody Allen films, this one's deeply reactionary and nihilistic, with the usual "what does life matter -- nothing, so may as well have a good time" carping. Here the good time is expressed doubly through celebrations of holidays no one believes in, with the occasional song-and-dance number. (It is worthwhile finding out how badly Julia Roberts sings, and how well Goldie Hawn does.)
In addition to not being cast as the love interest for a man 50 years her senior, Lyonne also wisely avoids being made to sing or spout depressing pop psychology, if only because none of the other characters take her character seriously so it doesn't matter what her character says. She makes the best of her awkwardly written dialogue and voiceover narration. She's so inconsequential to her family that I questioned Allen's choice to make her the narrator at all, but taking the whole affair into consideration, I think he just didn't care. This film is about two productions into his late period when he turned out seven or eight terrible movies for every watchable one. So, to repeat my first point, the most important thing about Lyonne's presence in this movie is that she was cast at all, thus raising her visibility and launching her into starring roles in her next two films.
But I’m a Cheerleader (1999)
"But I'm a Cheerleader" (seen at festivals in 1999 but not released in the U.S. until 2000) was the first feature by Jamie Babbit, who has gone on to work mostly in television. The plot: Lyonne plays a teenager named Megan who is shipped off by her parents to gay conversion therapy camp. This horrific scenario is played as comedy -- fine, you could make a comedy that takes the issue of homophobia and hypocrisy seriously. But the movie doesn't take much of anything seriously. Even though this is a feature film, most of it's played as an extended SNL sketch. The art direction is sometimes naturalistic, sometimes Barbie-level surreal, with no consistency; the soundtrack is filled with low-production indie rock songs with ambivalent lyrics that would be at home in any romantic comedy. Whether this reflects a lack of vision by the first-time director, an inadequate budget, or weak producers who couldn't see what was happening, I don't know. It could be that getting the film finished at all was a heroic effort. Or it could be that there just wasn't enough talent to go around.
Lyonne is certainly the best thing in the film. She, at least, takes every moment seriously, like a professional; I almost always believed her line readings and her body language, much more so than in the Woody Allen film. Maybe she believed more in this movie, whereas in "Everyone" maybe she just trusted that Allen, still regarded at the time by most people as a great filmmaker, would make magic out of the tired situations that he'd filmed a dozen times before.
Clea DuVall, as the sullen camper whom Lyonne's character falls in love with, has something to work with and comes off as more than two-dimensional. But Megan's parents aren't abusive or frightening, they're insipid fools, with her dad (Bud Cort) resembling no one more than the red stapler-obsessed older worker in the movie "Office Space." Likewise, the character of the lady who runs the conversion camp is written, and played, in extremely shallow fashion. In her bright pink dress and severe hair, she might as well have been played in drag. The movie thus does a disservice to its viewers.
Slums of Beverly Hills (1998)
If you're looking for a comedy that was taken seriously by the filmmakers and cast, look no further than "Slums of Beverly Hills" (1998), also starring Lyonne. Unlike Babbit, first-time director Tamara Jenkins does a terrific job.
Like the previously discussed films, Lyonne plays a teenaged daughter in a family she feels is weird or unusual. The family (an older brother and a kid one, no mom) isn't that strange, but their situation is, or rather how their father deals with it: he pretends to them that they're doing just fine, that they live in Beverly Hills "for the schools," and that the reason they move from apartment to apartment, invariably running out without paying that month's rent, is that the place is a dump, not like the place they're moving to -- which, obviously to the viewer, is just as much of a dump as the one before.
Murray (Alan Arkin) works as a Cadillac salesman. You think hey, that's doing all right. But it boils down to standing in a showroom with your hands in your pockets for long stretches, maybe selling a car once a week. His kids have become inured to the disruptions of moving every month or two; mostly they just roll with it. Lyonne's character, Vivian, is only a 10th grader or so (the actress supposedly being a college student going to Columbia University in the Woody Allen film two years before this is just another Allenesque inflation of everyone's lifestyle, in a film where they aren't just rich, they live in a penthouse on Park Avenue and a kid her sisters meet at a deli turns out to be heir to a millionaire). When the film begins, her life has turned upside down because she has just acquired C-cup breasts and is not sure what to do with them. When her older, more experienced but sort of insane cousin Rita moves in with them, she gets an education.
Rita -- played in a wonderfully loopy yet sympathetic way by Marisa Tomei -- also presents an opportunity for Murray. He can ask his well-off brother, Rita's father, for help supporting her. They move on up to an apartment that really is much nicer. Then it all falls apart in a series of farcical encounters ending in a showdown with the richer brother (Carl Reiner) that shows the viewer, and Lyonne's character, the source of their father's humble, grinding character.
Lyonne is really good in this, partly because the script is good. Not just her dialogue, but the situations she's in. And Arkin -- very experienced, controlled, in command of his powers -- is clearly great to work with. You get the sense that Lyonne was learning from him every day they shot scenes together.
American Pie (1999)
"American Pie" is, of course, mainly a teenage boy sex comedy. Log line: Four boys who are still virgins vow to lose their virginity before the end of their senior year, which, judging from the weather in Ohio where the film is set for some reason (it's quite obviously shot in southern California), is about a month away. The boys are played by mostly forgettable actors, the girls by actresses who became stars, at least for a while: Tara Reid, Alyson Hannigan, Mena Suvari, and Lyonne. Here Lyonne has only a supporting role, but her character's position is instructive. She is more experienced than the other girls and counsels them. She even counsels one of the boys: "Well, if you want to get her in the sack, just tell her you love her," she says, adding pointedly but very naturally, "That's how I was duped." And she is not the target of any of the boys. This persona of the girl who stands apart, who observes the hurly burley without participating in it, seems very natural for Lyonne.
But it's also significant that the previous film with Alan Arkin was her last starring role for some time. Her career took a long downturn: according to her bio, she went through a time of self-sabotage and wound up getting open-heart surgery to repair damage wrought by a heroin addiction. Then she was cast in the hit HBO series "Orange is the New Black." I haven't seen it, but I imagine she was her old self again, full of vinegar, but with a depth borne of her journey.