Melbourne International Film Festival, 24/07/2010
Status: Behind by 21 films
Film formulas are all well and good if you can do something interesting with them. Like Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air turning my expectations about romantic-comedies on its head or LISA CHOLODENKO’s The Kids are All Right, reinventing the family comedy/drama.
Jules (JULIANNE MOORE, Blindness, Children of Men) and Nic (ANNETTE BENING, Mother and Child, American Beauty) are long-term lesbian partners who have raised two children together. When their eldest (MIA WASIKOWSKA, Alice in Wonderland) turns 18, her 15-year old brother (JOSH HUTCHERSON) urges her to make contact with the sperm donor. Enter MARK RUFALLO (Blindness, Zodiac), an alternative-lifestyle man-child to set a magnifying glass to the papered-over cracks in Jules and Nic’s marriage. A kind of everyday disaster slowly unfolds as the unconventional family deals with some fairly conventional issues.
Same-sex parented families are obviously a matter close to Cholodenko’s (Laurel Canyon) heart and her familiarity and respect for the dynamic adds a detailed richness to the story that I wish I found in more movies. Despite this obvious connection, Cholodenko is not preaching about gay parenting or civil rights here. The one point she does make (quickly, before moving on) is that families with gay parents are just as functional or otherwise as any other kind.
I like this film for so many reasons - for it’s textured writing, for it’s excellent, nuanced performances, for it’s amateur-hour boom-swinger constantly dropping the mike into shot, for being about gay folks but not about being gay (if you know what I mean), and for doing something interesting with a well-worn formula.
