WHITE OLEANDER

By RICHARD CORLISS

The Janet Fitch novel (and Oprah book) that inspired this perfect-child-in-a-rotten-world drama is a cozy read. Teenage foster child Astrid (Alison Lohman) has monumentally bad luck with mother figures (Michelle Pfeiffer, Robin Wright Penn, Renee Zellweger) but endures by taking on the attitudes of the women who disappoint her. Somehow the viewer endures too, because Lohman's pensive loveliness carries the film. --R.C.