"You may love your mother. You may even like her. Nonetheless, there resides within each daughter the need to be different, to improve on the old model, to be a composite of all your own unique goodness and take total credit for it. Woven into the mother-daughter tie is a built-in and unavoidable tension that goes with the territory," Victoria Secunda has written in When You and Your Mother Can't Be Friends. Erica Jong put it even more forcefully; reflecting upon this primal relationship, she wrote: "My love for her and my hate for her are so bafflingly intertwined that I can never really see her. I never know who is who. She is me and I am she and we're all together."

This tempestuous brew is bubbling at the core of White Oleander, the bestselling novel by Janet Fitch which has sold over 1.5 million copies after being selected by Oprah for her book club in 1999. Mary Agnes Donoghue (Beaches) has adapted this emotionally rich and hard-hitting coming-of-age drama for the screen. At the center is the turbulent mother-daughter relationship between a beautiful, dangerous, and controlling artist and her vulnerable, sensitive daughter.

Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer) is a stunningly attractive woman whose artistic talent makes her feel very special. She looks down on most other people and lauds her own independence, honesty, and self-confidence. Then, acting out of anger and jealousy, she murders her boyfriend. She is given a prison sentence of 35 years to life. Astrid ( Alison Lohman), her fifteen-year-old daughter, suddenly finds herself adrift in the foster care system of Los Angeles. Ingrid once told her to imagine the two of them as Viking warriors. But Astrid finds it hard to tap into that energy when she is so confused and is grieving the loss of her mother.

Her first foster home is with Starr Thomas (Robin Wright), a former stripper turned born-again Christian who lives in a trailer with her family and "Uncle Ray" (Cole Hauser), her boyfriend. Astrid tries to please her by getting baptized and wearing a cross around her neck. But Starr is an out-of-control woman who senses that this pretty new addition to the family is seducing Ray. She returns to alcohol and after a fight with Ray, shoots Astrid in the shoulder.

While she recovers, Astrid is sent to a state institution, where she has to grow up fast when surrounded by others hardened by the foster care system. She meets Paul (Patrick Fugit), an orphan whose parents were drug addicts. She is impressed with his talent as a comic book artist. They form a tender friendship that blossoms slowly given all the pain that has worn Astrid down and frayed her nerves.

Next Astrid moves into the home of Claire (Renee Zellweger), a lonely actress who lives in a lovely Malibu home near the ocean with her husband (Noah Wylie), who is always away on business. Astrid and Claire become as close as sisters, doing fun things and talking intimately. But their relationship is eventually sabotaged by Ingrid who continues to exert power over her daughter even from prison. In one of the drama's most chilling moments, she ridicules the vulnerable actress when she visits the prison. For the first time, Astrid sees clearly her mother's malevolence and the way she uses her beauty and power to hurt those she views as weak and worthless. She also feels the sharp edge of Ingrid's anger that she should have any feelings of love for such a broken person. Soon after this encounter, Claire commits suicide. Astrid is devastated. Her sketches, paintings, and watercolors are now her only source of sustenance in a world where nothing seems to last and everything is wiped away by other people's raging emotions of anger, lust, jealousy, and greed.

Astrid gets a dose of the latter when she is taken under the wings of Rena (Svetlana Efremova), a Russian emigre who scours dumpsters for goods that she and her band of foster girls can sell in flea markets. This hardened woman's goal is to make all the money she can since it's the only thing that counts in an uncertain and shaky world. Under her watch, Astrid adopts a Goth look, and thanks to the accumulative effect of all her trials and tribulations, develops a self-protective shell. This proves to be especially helpful in a final truth-telling session with her mother who needs her to testify on her behalf in a bid for a new trial.

Director Peter Kosminsky successfully mines the primal passions at the center of the tortured mother-daughter relationship between Ingrid and Astrid. He draws out an Academy Award caliber performance from Michelle Pfeiffer as the uncompromising artist who wants her daughter to be as lean and mean and self-reliant as she is. Alison Lohman is convincing as the chameleon-like Astrid who changes herself again and again to win the approval of her foster mothers. When it comes time to square off against Ingrid and to declare her independence, all that she has experienced serves her well. Lohman delivers the key to Astrid's survival — her resiliency and her yearning for love that does not have to be won in a battle or proven by required actions.

The DVD includes deleted scenes, a "Making of..." Bravo special, an HBO First Look called "The Journey of White Oleander," and commentaries by director Peter Kosminsky, author Janet Fitch, and producer John Wells.