Review: Welcome to the Dollhouse
Blu-ray: Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)
Director Todd Solondz has this knack of making the most unattractive and morally corrupt characters…sympathetic. He’s also one of the best American, sort of ‘unknown’, filmmakers around, mainly because he’s so …. different, showing empathy for the underbelly of America.
Welcome to the Dollhouse follows the Weiner family, mainly Dawn Wiener (Heather Matarazzo), who is 11 and in 7th grade Junior High. Dawn has a brother, nerdy college obsessed Mark (Matthew Faber) and a perfect little sister Missy. Dawn hates Missy, she’s pretty, petite and is constantly prancing around in a ballet tutu, she’s also the favourite child and constantly getting Dawn into trouble.
Mark is in a band (because it’ll look good on his college application) and when new guy Steve Rodgers (long hair, thick jock type) joins the band, Dawn falls madly in love with him, against the background of her merciless bullying by practically everyone in school (her locker is the only one covered in graffiti about how ugly she is and a massive ‘lesbo’), but mainly by horrible class mate Brandon, who tells her one day – and very menacingly – that he’s going to rape her at 3pm.
This is what Solondz does best, black comedy with some rape/horror/paedophilia (see ‘Happiness’).
‘Best’ you say? Yes. I’m afraid so.
This absolutely horrible character is given a human back story enabling you to see WHY he behaves in such a way, but doesn’t forgive his behaviour, also he doesn’t redeem himself and just carries on being a knob. Turns out he wants Dawn to be his girlfriend, but she’s in love with Steve.
Dawn’s life is pretty crap, she – in the words of my dad – has a face like a bosted clog (I don’t know what that is either, but… unattractive), has parents who really don’t like or care for her and is just continuously picked on throughout the whole film, but then, she’s not such a ‘shy, nice’ girl herself, being horrible to her only friend Ralphie and purposely putting her sister in harms way, which results in her being abducted and made to pirouette for the weird next door neighbour, even she is ‘complicated’ in a jealous nasty kid way.
The acting in this does remind me of John Waters and you could imagine him and Todd getting together to make a musical about Trans women in New York, with a sprinkle of rape and perhaps foot fetishes to give it some sparkle.
Like Solondz other films, this is a bit ‘marmite’ – you either love it or hate it. Personally I love his films and Welcome to the Dollhouse is a classic, presented here by Radiance Films with some great special features and superb picture and sound.
Limited Edition Special Features:
- High Definition digital transfer of the film with uncompressed original stereo audio, approved by director Todd Solondz
- Uncompressed stereo PCM audio
- Interviews with Solondz and star Heather Matarazzo (2022)
- Todd Solondz’s Suburban Nightmare: A visual essay by critic and author Hannah Strong on the film and its place within Solondz’s work
- Audio commentary by BJ and Harmony Colangelo of the This Ends at Prom podcast
- Trailer
- Optional English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- Reversible sleeve featuring designs based on original posters
- Limited edition booklet featuring new writing on the film by A. S. Hamrah and Molly Lambert, archival writing by Solondz and Julian Murphet and extracts from contemporary writing on the film
- Limited edition of 2000 copies, presented in full-height Scanavo packaging with removable OBI strip leaving packaging free of certificates and markings
Released 6th March 2023.
Review by Tina from a disc kindly supplied by Radiance Films.