There’s no overabundance of movies about the relationships between adult brothers and sisters. The best one I know is You Can Count on Me, but this is a close second. Laura Linney is in both movies, and she’s joined here by the equally talented Philip Seymour Hoffman. A struggling would-be playwright (Linney) and an unhappy academic, they come together because their estranged father’s girlfriend has died, and he can’t care for himself. The bare outlines of the story may suggest a heartwarming tale of a family reunited, where an old man is able to atone for his inadequacy as a parent, where adult children learn to forgive, where a kind of closure is achieved. But it’s clear early on that the father is not capable of that sort of self-reflection at this late date, and the children aren’t expecting it. They’re merely fulfilling a duty, although the son, unlike the daughter, feels no need to splurge when choosing a nursing home for Dad.
Instead of an idealized family reunion we get flawed characters (she has a married lover, and he’s also having romantic difficulty) with fickle details, and a surprising amount of humor. (However, having seen the film billed as a comedy, I was surprised in the other direction. In the main, it’s definitely a drama.) The story is not happy, though the ending provides a touch of hopefulness. But neither is it maudlin. I’m sure some will disagree, but I never found the movie depressing, merely sad and somehow sweet. The writer-director Tamara Jenkins, whose previous feature was Slums of Beverly Hills, again shows a feel for the dynamics of families, even if the one here is quite different.
Instead of an idealized family reunion we get flawed characters (she has a married lover, and he’s also having romantic difficulty) with fickle details, and a surprising amount of humor. (However, having seen the film billed as a comedy, I was surprised in the other direction. In the main, it’s definitely a drama.) The story is not happy, though the ending provides a touch of hopefulness. But neither is it maudlin. I’m sure some will disagree, but I never found the movie depressing, merely sad and somehow sweet. The writer-director Tamara Jenkins, whose previous feature was Slums of Beverly Hills, again shows a feel for the dynamics of families, even if the one here is quite different.
reviewed 4/25/08
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