Is this Laura Dern? And a seven-year-old gem

While three movies do not a career make - and this actress's career has had much wider and varied  scope - it was still a surprise to watch three more or less supposedly representative films of one of the contemporary film world's leading actresses. They’re featured in a Laura Dern mini retrospective on Criterion Channel. If these are representative of a character who defies stereotypes then "defy" is a misnomer. The first film, Smooth Talk (Joyce Chopra 1985), interestingly enough based on author Joyce Carol Oates's Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?  has Dern as Connie, a 15-year-old wild thing who flirts ferociously with boys at the local mall and irascibily confronts her mother (Mary Kay Place) at every turn. She is, in a word, a typical if gregarious teenager who lacks as much insight into herself as those would-be victimizers. In Rambling Rose (Martha Coolidge 1991), we again see Dern as the outrageous flirt or in a certain parlance, tramp. Set in the 1930’s Dern as Rose has a checkered background and is considered by many a "loose" woman. Her behavior alights the town in the Deep South as scandalous, as she sashays along main street in skimpy clothes to the delights of men and condemnation of women. Finally, in Citizen Ruth (Alexander Payne 1996), Dern plays a young woman 'Ruth' (photo) caught up in the abortion wars. Ruth, a drug addict, is at once fearsome and naive. After getting pregnant she ends up adopted by both sides in the abortion debate. One would think with a title like "Citizen" Ruth would undertake a commanding role of moral rectitude, whatever side that puts her on, but it isn't the case. She’s literally willing to go to the highest bidder (literally a monetary payoff) whether she chooses to have her baby or not. All this being said Dern is a splendid actress in this and the other films but her character is hardly an example to other women on screen or off. Worst of all about Citizen Ruth is its cartoonishness. Burt Reynolds plays a farcical anti-abortion leader arriving with private chauffeur. Tippi Hedren plays his opposite, swooping down in a helicopter to excavate Ruth from the opposing braying hordes. Thankfully, Ruth finds her own way. 

Meanwhile one of the better films I have seen lately is a little known gem from 1953 called Little Fugitive (Raymond Abrashkin, Morris Engel and Ruth Orkin) about seven year old Joey (Richie Andrusco) as a boy lost in Brooklyn who ends up on a summer weekend in Coney island. This film "influenced the French New Wave and is considered by modern-day critics to be a landmark film because of its naturalistic style and groundbreaking use of nonprofessional actors in lead roles,” according to Wikipedia. Who knew? But, whatever else, it’s a charming and realistic story of a kid "on the run" from his boyhood terrors and creating a world of his own amidst summer honky tonk.