THE NICKEL CHILDREN, starring Tamara Hope and Reiley McClendon, both whom give superb performances, is the story two fourteen year olds in L.A. who survive by earning their money on their back. Amid the grimy ugliness of mildew-coated motel rooms, an operatic and powerful tale is spun, and it is as though you can look past the filth and squalor of their lives and see what they used to be: two innocent children whom were (and still are) preyed upon by pedophiles.
The girl, Cat, is undeniably the focal character of the film, as the boy Nolan's history is not told as hers is. Perhaps his tale was much more awful. This film does not revel in the gory details of the incest and rape that drove Cat to run away from her home somewhere back east, but rather gives us her viewpoint. Reserved even when a saucy hooker named Beatrice (Marsha Thomason) tries to befriend her and watch out for her, Cat survives the horror of her existence (it's not a life) by keeping her heart small and cold. Only where Nolan is concerned does Cat's heart soften. Often victimized by brutal johns, Nolan appears with bruises to his face and Cat tends to and protects him. In fact, their camaraderie (it's not revealed when or how they met) is part loyal friendship and part soul-mates. Cat seems "older" and harder than the baby-faced Nolan, whose regard for Cat is akin to both innocent romantic love and hero-worship.
Beatrice is found the victim of a grisly murder at the seedy flophouse the prostitutes stay in, and while Cat and Nolan are debriefed at the police station, Cat collapses and finds herself in an ER, where the doctor (Jeremy Sisto) tells her that she is pregnant. Nolan's reaction to the news is that of starry-eyes romance as he tells Cat how wonderful it would be to run away to a nice place and raise the new baby in happiness. It's almost unbearable in its earnestness. The half gritty, half fairy tale personality of this film is arresting, especially in a sequence in which Nolan asks Cat to do a twirling ballerina dance that she did as a child. While she does so, he rushes from the hospital room, vandalizes the window of a consignment shoppe, and steals a beautiful pale yellow formal gown that Cat had been admiring hours earlier.
It is only when Cat tries on her new gift that you see her for what she truly is, a princess who fled her "kingdom" when wickedness invaded and despoiled her. Cat may not be your typical "heroine" but she is not unlike Cinderella, Snow White, Alice, or even Dorothy. Cat is being pummeled by evil and it seems she will never be able to find "home." The worst ugliness in this film is not in those "by the hour" establishments Cat and Nolan sleep in, for what is uglier than than being raped and abused by someone you are supposed to trust? A time comes when Nolan is taken from her, and Cat finds herself alone. She wanders around, dazed and wondering what she will do next. Feedo,(Tom Sizemore) the gruff but tender-hearted manager of the disgusting motel begs Cat to rethink her life. At last, knowing that there is no other option besides staying on in Feedo's place, Cat takes every penny she has on her person and buys a bus ticket home.
Even when she arrives, Cat knows nothing has changed. The wickedness that destroyed her happy kingdom is still there, manifested in true human fashion in her mother's (Maeve Quinlan) tearful, excruciating denial. Close-ups of rag dolls, stuffed toys, Disney books about princesses who lived happily ever after, and the sweet golden light that shimmers off a little yellow ruffled dress are no disguise for the evil that reigns here.
As Cat's mother retreats into the kitchen to make her daughter something to eat, she dissolves into tears as she agonizes whether or not she can (or will) do the right thing for her daughter's sake.
Cat is left alone in her room, the place where her life was irreversibly changed. She takes a hot shower, hoping to feel clean for the first time in a long while, but she remembers a sentence her mother said just minutes earlier that somehow has a silent but crushing impact, like the collapse of a bridge just before a lone, bedraggled survivor was about the reach the other side of a dark, icy river: "That stain will never come out." It is then that Cat realizes that with the loss of her one friend in the world, her world is shattered anew. Nolan had given her a reason to "go on" and to "plan", even if they could never see their plans come to fruition because they never had enough money to do more than eat a scroungy meal here and there. Cat had been Nolan's "big sister", Nolan had been Cat's reason for surviving.
This fairy tale has no happy ending, for anyone, and that's the way it is in real life as well for anyone affected by rape and incest. It's grim and depressing, but nonetheless a reality in our world. At the end of this film, mention is made of a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles called "Children of the Night" that rescues and educates young teens who are runaways and/or living in prostitution in order to survive.
The talented cast includes John Billingsley and Max Perlich. This bleak but beautiful and mesmerizing story is very important and very inspiring. I couldn't recommend it highly enough.
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