MEDIA > REVIEWS > PHOEBE IN WONDERLAND

"It may sound premature to proclaim that Elle Fanning delivers a career-making performance at age nine, but that's exactly what this amazing young actress accomplishes with Phoebe in Wonderland. She portrays the troubled title character with a sensitivity and complete lack of artifice that make Phoebe seem heartbreakingly genuine. This kind of role could have been disastrously mishandled by a showier, less empathetic young actress, but Fanning makes not a single misstep. She is a marvel."
[Artist Direct]

"Visuals aside, what drags Phoebe in Wonderland along is Fanning’s performance, but the rest of the film never rises up to the level of her simple moments counting steps or explaining that she has to wash her hands a certain number of times."
[Paste Magazine]

"... Fanning’s face hints at so much more. Elle has the Fanning family congenital radiance: With her white translucent skin and oversize faraway blue eyes, she doesn’t have to overact to suggest she’s in another realm. It’s more shocking when a girl who looks so pretty and cherubic blurts out nasty rhyming put-downs and spits on people; it doesn’t track."
[New York Magazine]

"Phoebe... a note-perfect Elle Fanning."
[Daily Breeze]

"Fanning (Dakota's talented little sister), her blue eyes enormous and wondering, gives a performance without a false note. With both Clarkson (whose ethereal Miss Dodger wears governessy black dresses as a background to her own drama) and Huffman, she finds moments of startling connection, quietly finding the soul of this unhappy child. Everything feels all too real for Phoebe, and Fanning shows us her character's fearful joy in performing on stage. Every now and then, a wordless imaginary Alice — a more grown-up one — peers at Phoebe from afar. Fanning's gaze at her is as mesmerizing as any special effect; a troubled little girl seeking a beacon to lead her through Wonderland."
[Seattle Times]

"Elle Fanning, the star of Phoebe in Wonderland, turns 11 this April. She made her debut at two, playing a younger version of her sister Dakota's character in I Am Sam, and already has 27 movie and television credits. To be so experienced as a child actor can translate on screen to a preternatural poise that, while admirably skilled, tends to creep out us mere mortals. But in her first real starring role as a troubled, Alice in Wonderland-obsessed 9-year-old, Fanning gives the kind of heartbreaking performance that makes you want to yank her off the screen and make it all better. Her work is without contrivance. The same cannot be said for writer/director Daniel Barnz's film... But what Phoebe does have on its side, other than Fanning's exquisite delivery, is its provocative look at motherhood... In the end, the good in Phoebe, powered by Fanning's transcendent performance, outweighs the bad."
[Time]

"[The director] also has a trio of excellent actresses in Fanning, Huffman and Clarkson. When any two of them have a scene together, the atmosphere becomes charged with more than the sum of its parts; all three are so responsive to one another that watching them is like watching brilliant musicians jamming spontaneously."
[IF Magazine]

"Studying Elle Fanning’s tour de force in ``Phoebe in Wonderland'' is akin to watching a 9-year-old Tiger Woods diving a golf ball 400 yards straight down a fairway. It’s an awesome display of talent that defies explanation. How does someone not even a decade old possess a knowledge and understanding of a craft that mere mortals take a lifetime trying to perfect? Ah, but why question what you’re seeing when it’s far more enjoyable to just sit back and witness greatness being unfurled. It’s quite a coming-out party, too, with Fanning’s tiny body struggling to contain the Meryl Streep-sized talent hidden within. As Phoebe Lichten, a shy 9-year-old flummoxed by the realization that’s she not like the other kids in her fourth-grade class, Fanning is vivid in her conveyance of the hurt, anger and loneliness of being different... She draws many a tear, too, and not because she has few friends and, as she says, ``no hope.'' No, it’s more due to Fanning’s uncanny ability to take us deep inside Phoebe’s cross-wired rain to understand what it’s like having no control over body, mind and speech... It’s Fanning, though, who you can’t take your eyes off. Much like her older sister, Dakota, she goes far beyond precocious and approaches something closer to a Zen-like shrewdness with displays of maturity and insight that stretch millenniums beyond her age. She may be a kid, but up on screen she’s a bonafide star. "
[Patriot Ledger]

"Felicity Huffman may headline Phoebe in Wonderland, but the film’s scene stealer is the actress portraying the title character. Elle Fanning is a revelation as Phoebe, a conflicted and troubled young girl whose parents – including Huffman as her mom and Bill Pullman as her dad – desperately try to discern what is troubling their child. Fanning is famously the sister of another dazzling young actress, Dakota. Much as her sister has shown in a half-dozen films, Elle is commanding in her complete inhabiting of Phoebe... Fanning, much like her sister Dakota, is a fine actress. Witnessing her in Phoebe in Wonderland is an acting clinic. Audiences have to remember that we are witnessing a child whose years of performing experience is limited by the reality of her recent birth. Phoebe in Wonderland would have no wonder without Fanning and her effervescent thespian gifts. This Wonderland is a rabbit hole worth going down if the drama in family drama does not normally overwhelm your film appreciation experience. Watching Fanning as Phoebe will be remembered as a moment mirroring when audiences were introduced to Jodie Foster decades ago."
[SheKnows.com]

"Sparked by Elle Fanning's resonant performance, "Phoebe in Wonderland" is the story of a fourth grader as inventive as she is distracted... Fanning (Dakota's kid sis), 9 years old when the movie was shot, is stunning as the high-spirited, moody, dreamy girl who defies all the rules - and the convenient categories girls are sorted into. So realistic are Phoebe's quicksilver emotions that at first it doesn't seem Fanning is acting at all. That helps to ground the film, which swings seamlessly from the world of grown-up expectations to that of childhood reverie and rebellion."
[The Philedelphia Inquirer]

"The younger sister, of course, of teen-acting machine Dakota, 10-year-old Elle manages to be both mysterious and endearing."
[New York Daily News]

"Phoebe in Wonderland boasts three splendid performances by a trio of gifted actresses. And one of them is a ten-year-old. Oscar nominees Felicity Huffman and Patricia Clarkson shine in support. But it's young Elle Fanning -- yep, Dakota's younger sister -- who, as the protagonist, carries the film on her little shoulders in an astoundingly demanding and assured performance... it's Fanning who gives the film its transcendent distinction. In a beyond-her-years performance that borders on the amazing, she never pushes too hard for effect, never lets us see any self-conscious technique, never loses the thread of her complex character for an instant. Child or no child, this is work worthy of at least an Oscar nod... Phoebe in Wonderland is a fanciful metaphorical fable about seeking creative refuge from the harshness of reality, that's at times inordinately moving. Best of all is one Elle of a lead performance from an extraordinarily gifted youngster fanning the flames of stardom."
[All Headline News]

"Where the adults are uniformly rote and stilted, Fanning gives a strong, committed performance deserving of a tougher directorial vision."
[National Public Radio]

"'Phoebe in Wonderland' belongs to Barnz and Fanning... Fanning (Dakota's talented little sister), her blue eyes enormous and wondering, gives a performance without a false note. With both Clarkson (whose ethereal Miss Dodger wears governessy black dresses as a background to her own drama) and Huffman, she finds moments of startling connection, quietly finding the soul of this unhappy child. Everything feels all too real for Phoebe, and Fanning shows us her character's fearful joy in performing on stage. Every now and then, a wordless imaginary Alice — a more grown-up one — peers at Phoebe from afar. Fanning's gaze at her is as mesmerizing as any special effect; a troubled little girl seeking a beacon to lead her through Wonderland."
[Seattle Times]

"Phoebe is a lovely but disturbed 9-year-old. Fanning portrays her with luminous grace, playfulness and a convincing sense of obsession."
[USA Today]

"In the title role, there's Elle Fanning, who has everything her big sister Dakota had as a little girl, plus the luminosity of the young Michelle Pfeiffer. Seriously. I wouldn't go so far as to say she's Mozart, but this 10-year-old girl has an ability to relax and think in close-up that some actors spend half their careers trying to learn. As young Phoebe, a gifted, sensitive girl who is at the mercy of strange compulsions, she presents a complicated portrait of willful intelligence without ever coming across as an awful brat."
[The San Francisco Chronicle]

"Fanning's performance stands up to [Russell] Crowe's portrayal of mentally ill mathematician John Nash [in 'A Beautiful Mind']. As the title character -- a troubled 9-year-old who finds refuge from the growing sense that she's not like other children by playing Alice for a school production of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" -- the young actress shines."
[The Washington Post]

"Elle Fanning gives a luminous, almost transparent performance as a troubled 9-year-old girl in "Phoebe in Wonderland." As an actress, she's dreamier and less forceful than her older sister Dakota - more like an actual kid - and the movie's halfway over before you realize how many contradictory emotions she's summoning up. God knows what they feed these girls for breakfast - Cream of Streep?"
[The Boston Globe]

"As Phoebe, Ms. Fanning, completely refraining from melodrama or show business cuteness, gives a touching, subtle portrayal of a troubled child. When this smart, pretty, imaginative, emotionally stricken little girl fearfully admits she is unable to control her self-destructive compulsions, you feel for her."
[New York Times]

"Her name is Phoebe Lichten, and she's played by Elle Fanning, Dakota's younger sister, with astonishing ferocity and feeling... Let Clarkson and Fanning take you to the rabbit hole of seductive enchantment that defines this movie."
[Rolling Stone]

"Fanning is the best reason to see this, giving an uncanny, startlingly masterful performance. One can only wonder how much of Phoebe’s dilemma this young actor really understands, but, on the evidence of her acting, one could say that her knowledge is comprehensive. The movie often has a rather turgid TV Movie of the Week feel, but everything Fanning does is searingly believable. She makes the torture Phoebe feels on a daily basis utterly believable, and therefore truly tragic. It’s one of the great screen child performances of all time."
[Film Journal International]

"At first it’s hard to tell whom Fanning is trying to portray, but as the depth of Phoebe’s character grows, so does the depth of Fanning’s acting."
[Washington Square News]

"The title character... embodied with astonishing depth by Elle Fanning."
[Black Book]

"Conyers natives Dakota and Elle Fanning are an impressive pair of acting sisters, particularly given that they're both kids. Elle Fanning was only 10 years old for the filming of Phoebe in Wonderland, yet her rich performance nearly carries the entire movie. Despite the broad strokes in the characterizations of the adult roles, Fanning gives Phoebe a poise and focus worthy of Jodie Foster at the same age. Barnz's sensitive collaboration with Fanning prevents the disorder from defining the character. While Phoebe in Wonderland proves both vague and overly precious, Fanning asserts that despite her youth, she might be the most likely to succeed."
[Creative Loafing]

"Fanning wisely strips away any notion of cuteness or precociousness to make Phoebe feel genuine and fascinating and vulnerable."
[MSNBC]

"And though the narrative detours at times into overwrought episodic flights of fancy, Elle Fanning's poetically expressive performance is simply exquisite to behold, an Alice luminous with wonder indeed."
[NewsBlaze]

"Phoebe is differently enabled -- also beautiful, wistful and fey, as portrayed by Fanning. Whenever tyro writer-director Daniel Barnz sticks to his luminous star, his script's blatant inconsistency reads as willful ambiguity."
[Variety]

"Elle Fanning gives a standout performance in her breakout role, conveying delicately every phase of Phoebe's odyssey without ever condescending to the part or being too cute or precocious."
[Emanuel Levy]

"The plot finds angelic 10-year-old Phoebe (the facile and nuanced child actress Elle Fanning) in the grip of a weird transformation."
[Box Office]

"Yet the performances are transcendent—especially Fanning's, as the little girl who wants to get better, who wants to be better, as she slowly disappears through the Looking Glass."
[The Village Voice]

"The film's emotional clout comes from three outstanding performances by the radiant Elle Fanning (the younger sister of Dakota Fanning) as the rule-breaking and unconventional Phoebe; Felicity Huffman as her conflicted mother who wants to nurture her daughter's special qualities but worries that she is inadequate as a parent; and Patricia Clarkson as Miss Dodger, a teacher who draws out the best in her students and models the feisty independence of a creative soul."
[Spirituality & Practice]

"Elle Fanning, like older sister Dakota, shows preternatural poise and wisdom beyond her years, as she did last year playing young Daisy in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." Here, she stars as Phoebe, an imaginative 10-year-old whose playfulness devolves into unruly and self-destructive behavior... Fanning is mature enough as a young actress to pull it off."
[The Associated Press]

"In all fairness, however, the film belongs to Fanning, who provides the perfect bookend for Clarkson on a shelf of wondrous fables. Fanning finds her footing from the first scene and captures Phoebe perfectly, a dazzling feat considering the complexities of portraying a person with a mild mental illness, a challenge even for a skilled adult actor. ... Fanning convinces even the child-averse (ahem) that the potential of a child to astonish and delight is worth such forbearance."
[Pajiba.com]

"The mesmerizing performance of Fanning as the gifted and troubled young Phoebe sparks the picture. Charismatic and graceful, Fanning is wondrous."
[The Hollywood Reporter]

"It is easy to fall in love with the character of Phoebe, as little Elle Fanning gives one hell of a performance. She is funny, she sings and she delivers a riveting, teary-eyed scene toward the end of the film that will leave few dry eyes in the house. Forget about Dakota, little Elle is going to be quite an actress."
[FilmSchoolRejects.com]

"Strong performances from Clarkson and Huffman bolster the film, but both roles require playing off Phoebe in all her myriad emotions, and thus the film weighs heavily on the petite shoulders of young Miss Fanning, who proves herself more than equal to the task. Fanning was quite good in Babel, but she's pretty brilliant here, perfectly capturing Phoebe in all her extremes; it's a performance quite beyond Fanning's young years, but she nails it to the wall. There's a certain luminous quality about her, and she lights up the screen in every scene. Barnz is blessed with a talented cast for his feature debut, and they make him look good."
[Cinematical.com]

"In a tour-de-force performance by Fanning (do the Fanning siblings do any less?) we see her deteriorate before our eyes but Barnz creates a Heavenly Creatures-like world in which she travels into as Phoebe finds solace in the Alice in Wonderland characters."
[Film Maker Magazine]

"'Phoebe' features two career high performances from two very different actresses. Elle Fanning (she's Dakota's little sister) has a true breakthrough role as the title character, a 9-year-old girl with a vivid imagination and obsessive compulsive tendencies."
[New York Metromix]

"'Phoebe in Wonderland', a magical Sundance film held together by the star-making turn of Elle Fanning, Dakota’s little sister."
[DCP.com]

"Elle Fanning, the nine-year-old sister of 13-year-old Dakota, stars in Phoebe in Wonderland, about a girl whose retreat into a fantasy world is driving her parents and teachers to distraction. The film also stars Felicity Huffman, Bill Pullman and Patricia Clarkson, and offers more proof that acting is in the genes, or else there's something in the Dakota family's drinking water."
[National Post]

"Phoebe in Wonderland, starring Dakota's equally precocious younger sister Elle... The main reason to see Phoebe in Wonderland is for yet another astonishing Fanning performance. How these little girls are able to summon such powerful reserves of fear and anguish and terror, I have no idea."
[Screen Grab]

"I think Phoebe is a fantastic and remarkable movie. The director's FIRST film, and it is wonderful. That's all I'll say, but there are stellar performances by Bill Pullman, Felicity Huffman, Patricia Clarkson and most importantly, 9-year-old Elle Fanning (Dakota's sister, and she should win an Oscar for this)."
[Droid Maker]

"And Elle Fanning definitely IS as freakily good as Dakota (What was in their baby formula?)."
[MTV Movies Blog]

"Playing her daughter is the next in line for the title of most precocious actor, Elle Fanning (Dakota's sister), who is remarkable in the film."
[Advocate.com]

"Elle Fanning is off the charts good."
[Wildsound Filmmaking]

"That "other" Fanning, Elle, turned in an incredible performance as a Tourette’s sufferer who finds solace in a grade-school production of "Alice in Wonderland." In fact, she’s so good in Phoebe that it’s impossible to hold her lineage against her - it’s not an easy part even for an adult, but she absolutely nails it."
[Pajiba.com]

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