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Canada, United States · 2018
1h 38m
Director Courtney Balaker
Starring Catherine Keener, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Aaron Douglas, Callum Keith Rennie
Genre Drama
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This film follows the drama behind the real-life controversial Supreme Court ruling over eminent domain. Susette Kelo, a paramedic in a small town in Connecticut, unwillingly becomes the face of a lawsuit against the government when her city tries to seize her and her neighbor’s land for corporate redevelopment.
The story of this fight is fascinating, and the repercussions of this case are still being felt today. But the cinematic treatment of the story is confused. The movie often seems to have a hard time making up its mind whether it wants to be “The Insider” or “Mean Girls.”
If the story’s political and personal nuances have been a bit flattened in Balaker’s script, keeping proceedings in a movie-of-the-week register, this Little Pink House nonetheless retains what property developers would call good bones.
The New York Times by Jeannette Catsoulis
Palely photographed and anchored by a quiet, rather weary performance from Ms. Keener, Little Pink House is a peculiarly enervated affair. The structure is choppy, and there are odd moments of tonal dissonance.
Los Angeles Times by Katie Walsh
It's confusing and inconsistent, and no amount of Keener can truly anchor it.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Much of the success of Little Pink House comes from the casting and the performance of Catherine Keener, an actress that has, simultaneously, an aura of glumness and an atmosphere of fun about her.
It’s a good story, but too slow-moving for its own good. The cast works diligently, and Keener is scrappy but calm throughout, with a convincing naturalism as a woman with tremendous strength and a powerful belief in civil rights—at a time when most women were reluctant to speak out against political corruption.
The Hollywood Reporter by Stephen Farber
Little Pink House brings urgency to a fascinating, underexplored theme.
Village Voice by Tatiana Craine
Like Erin Brockovich for eminent domain, Little Pink House does well to explain the thorny legal issue at its center without getting bogged down in minutiae. Although Susette’s story unfolds in small-town Connecticut, Balaker hammers the point home: This could happen anywhere.
Keener’s performance keeps the film grounded even as blunt scenes of the opposing camp’s machinations flirt with soap opera villainy.
Courtney Moorehead Balaker's film is mostly a sobering dramatization of a true and controversial story in recent Connecticut history.
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