A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries

Nor need she, for if she's the daughter of brilliant novelist James Jones, hers is a privileged life. Yet the sole reason Kaylie Jones's tepid novel-memoir was committed to film -- her relationship to the famed author -- has been effaced by the film's insistence on pseudonyms. Not that Kris Kristofferson's Jones manqué character has much to do with anything -- he broods avuncularly on the fringes, his genius and demons irrelevant, with Barbara Hershey a more engaging presence as his wife. None of Jones's dark, edgy talent seems to have found its way into this account from Kaylie (played by a passive Leelee Sobieski), an episodic, humdrum tale of growing up in Paris in the '60s, relating to her adoptive brother, and dealing with high-school dating on her family's return to America. Daughter is directed by James Ivory, whose pointless period window dressing and dramatic inertia underscore the insipidity of this confessional indulgence.

-- Peter Keough