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Happy together? (l-r) Bening and Moore
in The Kids Are All Right.
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The
Family Way
By
Laura Leon
The
Kids Are All Right
Directed
by Lisa Cholodenko
It’s kind of ironic that, finally, a movie about how long-term
relationships change and transform over time—in short, what
happens to just about everybody—has come out and it’s very
wonderful and its central couple are lesbians. Nothing against
homosexuality, I’m just saying, as I have often enough, these
are the kind of real-life stories that everybody deals with,
and why aren’t we seeing more of them, instead of Clash
of the Cyborg Mutants in 3D, in cinemas?
In this case, Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore)
are happily wedded parents to Joni (Mia Wasikowska) and Laser
(Josh Hutcherson), whom they got via sperm donation. Nic,
a doc, and Jules, a former architect turned wannabe landscape
designer, have read all the “right” books and know all the
correct phraseology in dealing with kids, but here’s the thing:
None of this matters in the real-life world of raising young
people who feel a deeper affinity to their peers than to those
who raised them. Add to this mix the fact that Nic and Jules
(and for that matter writer-director Lisa Cholodenko) haven’t
the faintest clue how to deal with a teenage boy . . .
Things are already sticky for the family, what with the kids
geeking out over “the Momses’” penchant for gay porn as foreplay,
but when Laser longs to learn about his birth father, it’s
game on. Joni takes the initiative, and finds sperm donor
Paul (Mark Ruffalo), one of those ultra-cool locovore guys
who’s into living wild and free—which basically translates
into the fact that he’s never been able to commit to anything
long-term. Nic is appalled at the insertion of this presence
into their family, perhaps rightly complaining to Jules that
he’s a sperm donor, not a father; but nevertheless, Laser,
and, for different reasons, Jules, are intrigued. What transpires
is hard to describe without spoilers, but let’s just say that
Paul’s arrival reveals fissures in the family structure even
as it provides tantalizing questions to the audience about
what it means to be a family, and to what extent a strong
same-sex presence is integral to the well being of a growing
child.
The movie raises important issues even as it engages us with
warmth and humor. There’s a great scene in which Nic and Jules
confront Laser about his “meet up” with Paul; the revelation
that Laser, with Joni’s help, has met with their sperm donor,
and that it wasn’t, as they feared, a pedo or gay hook-up,
is particularly funny in numerous ways. While basking in its
PC creds, the movie excels at depicting and promoting a concept
of family, even if it’s not the kind that Nic and Jules had
originally anticipated. Nic is disturbed that Paul has chosen
a career “in the food-service industry” when, from his donor
bio, it appeared that he was studying international relations
and had lofty ideals about peace, love and understanding.
That said, Cholodenko doesn’t seem to get that some of the
funniest, or at least most scathing, moments of the movie
come from the ultra-new-agey, touchy-feely way in which the
main couple communicate, using verbiage that seems straight
out of the self-help books of the past two decades.
The acting is stellar, especially Bening, whose performance
could withstand beautifully a silent movie version of the
same. Ruffalo is rakish and charming and everything a teen
could hope for in a cool dad, just as he’s everything a wary
woman would recognize as a lousy life partner. Yet the movie
focuses not so much on individual flaws but on the makeup
of family, however untraditional. Paul’s insertion into what
many traditionalists would consider an already elastic family
situation leads to interesting reactions. He encourages Joni
to stand up to Nic, and he influences Laser in ways that Nic
and Jules were unable to. In other ways, he completely rocks
the relative stability of the Nic/Jules relationship, in such
a way as one wonders whether, for all their philosophizing
and rationalizing, they can survive. Cholodenko is unable
to balance the humorous and dramatic threads of the story,
leading to a very moralistic ending, but for the most part,
The Kids Are All Right is a tremendous gift to filmgoers,
especially in a season of big-budget special-effects losers.
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