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'the poker house' also known as 'behind closed doors' is a very well written and well acted realistic story about the life that children so often face when one or both parents drinks too much alcohol or comsumes other drugs. Also it touches on the sad reality that some church leaders are very different at home than what they portray at church. I heard there’s a guy named Buddha and that most people are Muslims. And the movie is the true story of director and actress Lori the poker house script Petty's gambling places in ohio childhood.20 Jun 2008 The Poker House Quotes. A+ rhiattharmon 31 December 2011 I was therereally. I was twelve. Mar 22, 2017  What parts of the movie Casino are based on real life? The answer is, a hell of a lot. Discover the chilling true stories behind Martin Scorsese's classic.

The Poker House, subsequently retitled as Behind Closed Doors, is a 2008 American drama film written and directed by Lori Petty, in her directorial debut. The film depicts a painful day in the life of a teenaged girl who is raising her two younger sisters in their mother's whorehouse. The story is based on Petty's own early life during the mid-1970s.^[1]

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Plot[edit]

The film focuses on one single day in the life of three abused and neglected sisters, Agnes (age 14) (Jennifer Lawrence), Bee (age 12) (Sophi Bairley), and Cammie (age 8) (Chloë Grace Moretz). Their mother, Sarah (Selma Blair), addicted to alcohol and drugs, has been coerced into prostitution to support her pimp, Duval (Bokeem Woodbine). Sarah is unable to care for the girls, forcing Agnes to take responsibility for her two younger sisters. Sarah’s house has become known as the Poker House, where neighborhood pimps and criminals gather to play poker, as well as buying sex. Agnes believes Duval loves her, as a boyfriend would, despite his abuse towards her mother.

Agnes arrives home very early one morning to tidy the house and wakes Bee, after preparing her paper route for her. As Bee gets ready to leave they reveal that Cammie often stays the night at her friend Sheila's house, and before they left their father, who was a preacher, he used to beat Sarah and the girls. The four fled, and Sarah, struggling to take care of the girls on her own, became a prostitute after meeting Duval.

The day shifts from girl to girl. Little interaction occurs among the three. Bee speaks of moving into a foster home, hoping to be adopted. Cammie spends the day at a bar, making friends with Dolly (Natalie West), the bar owner, and Stymie (David Alan Grier), an alcoholic. Agnes rides through town, talking with a few friends, playing a game of basketball, and picking up a couple of paychecks from her part-time jobs.

Towards the end of the day, Agnes climbs through Bee's window, avoiding the living room, which is full of gamblers, pimps, and drunks. Bee has locked herself in her room, and like Agnes, avoids the downstairs chaos. Agnes makes Bee leave the house, telling her not to come back for a while. She then makes her way into the living room, and a stranger begins to talk to her. He asks her why she is there, and she responds by telling him that this is where she lives and that Sarah is her mother. When the man finds out that Agnes is a star basketball player for her high school team, with an important game that night, the man gives her a sympathetic look and tells her to get out of the house and go to the game, but she ignores him.

Later that evening, Duval and Agnes begin kissing again, Agnes narrates over the entire scene, after a few minutes, Duval then rapes Agnes. As Duval releases her, she runs to the bathroom to clean herself, horrified by the thoughts of the violence and possibility of pregnancy. She is completely traumatized. Her mother enters the bathroom, and as Agnes reaches for her in utter distress, Sarah refuses to touch her, and instead tells Agnes to go to the store to pick up alcohol after reminiscing on Agnes being a handful as a young child, showing intelligence even when she was a one-year-old.

Soon after, Agnes overhears Duval telling Sarah that he will begin pimping and selling Agnes, as well. Agnes threatens to shoot Duval, firing a couple of shots to prevent Duval from leaving, screaming to her mother that he raped her and deserves to be shot for what he does to Sarah, too. Sarah only tells Agnes that she will defend him. Agnes leaves for her basketball game.

Agnes scores 27 points in the second half alone, a record that lasts for years to come. However, she falls when she scores the last goal, limps to the car, and has a meltdown. She then wipes her tears and puts the horrific events of the night in the back of her mind. She drives off and finds Bee and Cammie at a nearby bridge. The two get in the car, with Agnes not telling her young sisters of events that took place that evening, and instead takes them to get dinner. Bee reveals that she went to the bar after she went to a friend's house and that she found Cammie. Cammie then plays 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough', and the movie closes as the three girls sing together.

At the start of the film credits, Agnes is revealed to have left Iowa to go to New York and become an actress and artist. Some 20 years later, she is shown to have directed the movie, and the movie is the true story of director and actress Lori Petty's childhood.

Cast[edit]

• Jennifer Lawrence as Agnes
• Selma Blair as Sarah
• Chloë Grace Moretz as Cammie
• Bokeem Woodbine as Duval
• David Alan Grier as Stymie
• Danielle Campbell as Darla
• Sophi Bairley as Bee
• Casey Tutton as Sheila

Jennifer Lawrence's father, Gary Lawrence, appears uncredited in the film as the basketball coach of the other team.^[2]

Reception[edit]

Critical response[edit]

The Poker House has received mixed reviews from film critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 63% of critics have given the film a positive review based on eight reviews, with an average score of 6.2/10.^[3]

References[edit]

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1. ^Rosen, Lisa. 'AT THE MOVIES Lori Petty's hard look'. Los Angeles Times. latimes.com. Retrieved November 15, 2016.
2. ^'The Poker House (2008) – Trivia'. IMDb. Amazon.com. Retrieved September 16, 2012.
3. ^The Poker House at Rotten Tomatoes

External links[edit]

• The Poker House on IMDb
• The Poker House at Rotten Tomatoes

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Film/ThePokerHouse

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The Poker House is a 2008 independent drama film, based on the true story of writer/director Lori Petty's childhood. Agnes, played by Jennifer Lawrence, is a 14-year-old high school student. She gets straight A's, works two jobs and is a star basketball player. Her mother, Sarah, played by Selma Blair, is a prostitute who brings home different men every night and is regularly beaten by her pimp. Also in the family are two other girls, 12-year-old Bee and 8-year-old Cammie (Chloe Grace Moretz).

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Based On A True Story

One of the producers is none other than Stephen J. Cannell (who previously worked with Petty on the 21 Jump Street spinoff Booker).

Provides examples of:

• Arc Words:
  I race the sun home in the morning, and the moon up at night. Anything can happen, and anything does. There's just today. Then there's tonight.
• Cluster F-Bomb:
  Mother God Lord Jesus fuckin Christ Almighty, somebody shut the door!
• The Cutie: Agnes during her errands is friendly, outgoing, cheerful and well liked. Her attitude at home is another story...
• Direct-to-DVD: The movie got this treatment in the UK in 2015, under the title Behind Locked Doors.
• Disappeared Dad: The girls' father was an abusive priest. The family moved across the country to escape him.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: A retroactive example. In her first movie, Jennifer Lawrence plays a girl in over her head in tough situations with no father, a somehow rendered useless mother, and one or more younger siblings to watch. Which is pretty much her role in both Winter's Bone and The Hunger Games.

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• Heroic BSoD: Agnes has one after being raped, when she is in the bathtub and her mom has just left. See also Kick the Dog.
• Hope Spot: In the bathroom scene, despite the fact that every scene we see Sarah in, she is somehow tormenting her daughter, Agnes still reaches out to her pitifully. Sarah walks toward Agnes for just long enough the audience thinks it might become a Pet the Dog moment, then Sarah sprays some perfume and tells Agnes to go to the store.It simply goesdownhill from there.
• Karma Houdini: We never see anything bad actually happen to the pimp.
• Kick the Dog: Daughter very distressed after being raped by your pimp? Is she reaching out to you, longing to be held? Better ignore her emotions completely and verbally abuse her some more. See Heroic BSoD.
  • A second example occurs shortly after, when the mother chooses the pimp over her daughter.
• Mood Whiplash: Many examples. The most notable are:
  • After last seeing Agnes being abused a few scenes earlier, she goes to the newspaper where she works and jokes around with everyone there. Cut to Bee hiding in her room, barricading the door and practicing her saxophone.

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  • Agnes goes home after her errands and scares Bee by climbing in the window and having a relatively lighthearted conversation. Cut to the party where Agnes is raped. It gets worse from there, until she goes to the basketball game and the tone shifts back to hopeful and excited when she thinks of all the people who love her. Back to depressing when she breaks down in the car following the game, then back to upbeat, singing in the car with her sisters. Mood Whiplash indeed.
• Plucky Girl: The three daughters maintain remarkably positive attitudes, considering their environment.
• Precision F-Strike:
  MOM. This motherFUCKER just raped me!
• Rape as Drama: Agnes.
• The '70s: The movie takes place in 1976.
• Stockholm Syndrome: The mother has a case of this with the pimp. Agnes herself with the pimp, to some extent. Until he rapes her.
• Trauma Conga Line: Agnes' is long and varied. Her father abused her whole family, her mother seems to take a certain pleasure in belittling her, she is threatened at knife point, and raped by the pimp. You WILL want to give her a hug when she is in the bathtub. Made especially difficult to watch by Jennifer Lawrence's stunning performance.
• The Unintelligible: The black man who spends the day with Cammie at Dolly's.