The Kids Are All Right
The parents on the other hand…not so much.
Here’s a sometimes painful, always affecting, family comedy-drama that looks at life in an unconventional family unit not necessarily as a case study of how traditional family is the way, but in a universal way that can apply to straight or gay lifestyles. Co-writer and director Lisa Cholodenko (“High Art”) knows this turf inside and out, and with co-writer Stuart Blumberg (“Keeping the Faith”) turns it into something genuinely funny and enlightening.
Annette Bening and Julianne Moore may play lesbian lovers whose marriage is in a state of uncertainty, but their kids are the center of this film. Joni (“Alice in Wonderland’s” Mia Wasikowska, wonderful in another role of youthful discovery) is 18 and getting ready to go off to college. Laser (Josh Hutcherson) is 15, and wants her to contact the Cryo Bank their mothers got their donor sperm from so he can contact their father. He’s Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a laid-back guy who runs a restaurant as well as a farm nearby. The kids and Paul meet, and end up spending a lot of time catching up and getting to know each other.
Meanwhile, Nic (Bening) and Jules (Moore) are beginning to get into a bit of a rut. They feel separated from the kids even before Paul enters the picture. Joni’s trying to assert herself as an adult (something the uptight Nic isn’t ready to accept) and Laser is spending an awful lot of time with Clay, a friend who seems like a complete tool to everyone except Laser. Nic is a doctor whose career has led to much regulation in her personal life, while Jules is the stay-at-home mom (and definitely the nurturer of the two), but mostly because Nic needs to be in control. We get a glimpse of how their life together is starting to become undone when a lovemaking session goes awry, but when Paul enters the picture, it drives a further wedge into the pair, and in ways that are both expected and unexpected.
As was evident in “High Art,” Cholodenko is an insightful filmmaker when it comes to people in general, although her work (including what she did for “The L Word” on TV), has been particularly touching when it comes to looking at lesbian characters. Here, she and Blumberg look at an extended nuclear family with such intelligence and feeling that it’s observations would be the same if it were about a divorced pair and the new love in one of them’s life. For all three, the most important thing is the kids, and when their trust is shattered, it takes tough decisions and realizations to get it back.
Thankfully, she has three main actors who’ve spent careers playing characters who’ve had tough times in life. And whether it’s the weary and alcoholic pain of Nic’s lost grip on her life, the free-spirited exploration that leads Jules into situations both nurturing for her soul and emotionally challenging, or the new sense of responsibility Paul feels when he’s given the chance to be a father, Bening, Moore and Ruffalo nail the laughs and lives of these characters (Bening is certainly a front-runner for Best Actress, Moore would be for Supporting Actress were it not for Marion Cotillard in “Inception,” and between this, “Shutter Island,” and his new role in “The Avengers,” well, let’s just say it’s been a banner year for Ruffalo) in ways that well, we shouldn’t be surprised by from any of them.
It’s films like this that make the indie market a potent and lively alternative for summer action nonsense- it’s the type of film that allows their characters to live.
