Phoebe in Wonderland

I just watched Phoebe in Wonderland on Watch Instantly. I started playing it so I would have something to look at while I beaded, and didn't really expect much.

It turned out to be a very sensitive, imaginative movie about a troubled little girl and her family's attempts to cope with her difficulties.

There were many, tense, lovely and upsetting scenes, and great acting across the board. I was riveted by it, and was very pained by the girl's isolation with her problem.

The story centers around her involvement with the school's production of Alice in Wonderland, which her mother had written a dissertation about. As she gets immersed in her role as Alice, her "symptoms" get more severe. Her acting teacher(Patricia Clarkson) allows her uniqueness to flourish, and doesn't see the problems; her mother (Felicity Huffman) blames herself and struggles with her own issues; the father exudes a sense of alienation from the family... The ending didn't really do it for me; it seemed to tack on a gloss of a diagnosis as if that would solve everything. And, weirdly, the play suddenly included a musical number that was rather cheesy and didn't fit with the tone of the rest of the movie.