The Kids are All Right (Lisa Cholodenko, 2010)

Having seen barely any of the Oscar nominated films I am slowly getting around to them now. And The Kids are All Right was the first on the list. I love Lisa Cholodenko. High Art is one of my favourite films, but it is hardly mainstream. So I was interested to see what she would do with a film that was going to be easier to handle for a wider audience but still have lesbian themes in place.

I suppose one of the things that make this film a bit ground-breaking is that no time is really spent on explaining the set up. Obviously the fact that the parents are gay gives the film the plot, with the introduction of the donor and what that does to the family being the main thrust, but the family set up is shown to actually be less dysfunctional than more regular families. And it becomes more about how the relationships between a couple and their children are complicated regardless of gender and sexuality. By not making a drama about sexuality and crediting an audience with an acceptance of the family structure normalises it which is no bad thing.



So, the plot is that two teenagers from a lesbian couple decide to look up their donor father, and in so doing put the stability of the family at risk. And the father, who has avoided the stability of family life for the alternate pleasures of freedom and younger women, starts to question whether he made the right decision and if he wouldn’t quite like a family after all, particularly now that he has gone some way to helping to create one. It manages to feel quite real and heart wrenching while also being very entertaining.



Annette Bening has been widely praised for her performance and she is spectacular. Her character is a bit uptight as the high achiever, bread winner and stricter parent, Nic. She is a little difficult to love and her wife, Jules, is infinitely more laid back and instantly likeable. So it is clever that it is Jules who does the most to put the family in jeopardy, as we see the devastation it causes to Nic and the scene where she realises what the situation is is utterly crushing. To sympathise with one and then the other is an effective way of demonstrating what the implications are. And Bening plays both the hard and the soft to great effect.

Julianne Moore has a role that is much more fun, and the hippy-ish slacker type that I came across a lot when I lived in Santa Cruz. She has that California slang and intonation down. And it is also funny to see a woman who maybe hasn’t grown out of those youthful traits that I always assume get forced out of you with age and responsibility.



Mark Ruffalo’s character is also well done. The idea of the man who hasn’t applied himself but is doing ok, sleeping with young beautiful women (like the insanely beautiful Yaya DaCosta), riding about on a motor bike and thinking that he has this great life of freedom and lack of responsibility finding himself face to face with his children and the representation of the other path he could have chosen. It is a credit to the film that this long-admired male figure, who hasn’t bowed down to the constraints of family life, is seen as a little bit pathetic and not necessarily to be envied at all.



Mia Wasikowka and Josh Hutcheson are great as the children, both remarkably mirroring the traits of their mother as each of the women used the donor sperm to have a child. The perfect, high achieving Joni is Nic’s daughter and Laser (best character name ever?!?) with his aimlessness is of course Jules’s son. The sibling rivalry of their relationship and their differing experiences of teenage life all ring incredibly true.



So all in all a really lovely film about a slightly unconventional, but actually probably not that unconventional (Cholodenko herself is a lesbian mother) family and the troubles that come with that proximity level of expectation. In terms of being purely enjoyable, I think this film has succeeded more than many others I have seen recently. And it just happens to have lesbians in it.

The Brothers Bloom (Rian Johnson, 2008)

I just came back from a holiday in Nepal, and on my Gulf Air flight I caught The Brothers Bloom (Dir: Rian Johnson, 2008). Well blow me if I haven't been on the edge of my seat about this film since I first heard about it. Which feels like years now. I had a bit of a kip on the flight and it was half an hour in by the time I started watching it. So after watching the credits I let it play through again and caught the first half hour. So then on getting back to London I got super excited that it must be out in cinemas, or nearly out, and that I would rush to see it as fast as my little legs could get me to the multiplex.



But here came the nasty surprise. I would not be tottering to the multiplex or anywhere else, because the film doesn't have UK distribution. WHAT?!? The mind boggles, because from what I could make out on the tiny, rubbishy little plane screen, this film might well be a work of genius. My excitement, long built up, for this film might easily have been toppled by excitement, and yet it was not. In fact, having seen it once I might actually be even more so. But where will I get my next fix? Nowhere, apparently. Nowhere. Gah!



I'm not quite sure why no one wants it. Brick was pretty awesome, and critically acclaimed. And Rian Johnson seems to be being hailed as a director to watch. So what's the beef?

Well, I'll stop moaning anyway, and talk instead about how utterly wonderful I found the film. Wouldn't that be far nicer? Yes, I thought so.



There is something so utterly charming and fairy tale like about it. A whimsical atmosphere that just suffuses it with excitement and sweetness, and yet it is also prerry dark and perverse and willfully naughty at the same time. And that combination is right up my street!

The film inhabits a reality that isn't quite ours, entirely specific to itself. This affectation is almost reminiscent of the kind of worlds created by Wes Anderson and while I love his films and the worlds he creates, there definitely feels to be less pretension or superiority, or... something, in Johnson's creation.

Maybe because the characters appear to have such a wide eyed outlook on the world. An enthusiasm and a pleasure in the simplest of things that seems quite fresh and delightful. But whatever it is I was utterly drawn in.



There is something quite familiar about the plot machinations, the back story and the set up call to mind a number of different films, and that familiarity almost gives you a feeling that you know what is going to happen and that it is like a fairy story that you have heard a thousand times before and is comforting in its familiarity. Which of course allows the film to quietly pull the rug out from under you without you even noticing.

Because it is quite dark in parts, and what seem like happy endings are not necessarily to be trusted. But the films desire to play with that leaving you both satisfied and a little unnerved is one of the things that ends up making it so unique and interesting.



One of the things that excited me most about the film when I first heard about it was the cast.

I am a die hard fan of Mark Ruffalo, having first fallen at his feet when I saw You Can Count on Me, and Adrien Brody is just so heart breaking in almost everything he does. So the combination was pretty thrilling for me. It probably didn't hurt too much that they are both pretty dreamy to look at too...!



You know...?!



Then Rinko Kikuchi's next role after Babel (which, whisper it, I was otherwise pretty underwhelmed by) was going to be worth watching. But more of Miss Kikuchi later.

And they didn't let me down. They also seemed as though they were having a blast. You know, really getting a kick out of the film, which is always enjoyable to watch. It was particularly nice to see Rachel Weisz in it as I just feel as though she never gets a role that is quite right for her. They are either horribly lightweight or a bit grim. But she was lovely and playful and adventurous and fun and I liked her just fine!



The plot is like a dark little twisted fairy tale, but one that is innocently told. It is not really like anything I have seen before. It is silly and frivolous and delightfully entertaining. Its lack of distributor boggles the mind as I am sure there is an audience for it.



The styling of the film is definitely one of its hightlights and most easily demonstrated in the styling of Rinko Kikuchi. She is so quirky and marvellous. Not least because her character's name is Bang Bang.



And she loves blowing things up.



And she wears lashings of red lipstick and has a fag dangling from her lips at all times and that she doesn't speak but still makes herself abundantly clear.



I don't know that I remember a character whose styling I have preferred.



So all in all, I can't say enough about this film. It ticks all the boxes for what I am looking for in a cinematic experience, except, you know, the cinema...