The more I think about The Kids Are All Right (currently $6.59 on amazon
Nic (Annette Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) Allgood are a married lesbian couple who have raised two children, 18-year-old Joni and 15-year-old (I think) Laser, each borne by a different mother but from sperm from the same anonymous donor. Laser pushes Joni to call the sperm bank and request to contact the donor, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a modern-hippie restaurateur who becomes involved in the kids’ lives, much to the chagrin of Nic. Jules, meanwhile, is trying to get a landscape design business for which she seems fairly unqualified off the ground, and agrees to take on Paul as her first client, only to – mild spoiler here – end up sleeping with him. (The scene where they first have sex includes a hilarious nod to the scene in Boogie Nights where Moore’s character first sees Dirk Diggler’s jiggler.) The consequences of that act, while fairly predictable, aren’t fully played out at the end of the film, particularly not for Paul, whose storyline was cut off without a fraction of resolution, a shame for a character that was both central and well-developed, flawed yet sympathetic, often the lens through which we see the Allgoods more clearly.
At first blush, I took the film to be a meditation on the nature of families and how delicate the balance can be even in what otherwise appears to be an emotionally strong family; the fact that the parents are gay is only relevant in that it allows for the sperm-donor plot line, as otherwise the Allgoods are a standard nuclear family. But now I’m wondering if the film is really about Nic, and how destructive her own controlling personality is on her family, especially on Jules and Laser. She crosses the line into overinvolvement in some of her interrogations of her kids (and the third degree she later gives Paul). She uses Jules’ and Paul’s affair as a weapon to drive wedges between Jules and the kids as well as between Paul and the kids, and to reestablish her dominance in her relationship with Jules. In the dinner scene at Paul’s house, she brings the entire conversation to a halt with a seemingly innocent move that is designed to get all eyes on her. Even before the final blowout with Jules, their arguments revolve around her dissatisfaction – and if Jules tries to get a word in about her own complaints, Nic manages to refocus the argument about herself. She might be a narcissist, but even if not she clearly has a driving need to control everything she can in her life, even if that means detracting from the lives of those closest to her.
Bening is off the charts in her performance as Nic – what a year for actresses in starring roles – infusing nearly every scene, even light ones, with the tension that defines her tightly-wound character. Moore was also excellent in her typical up-for-anything role, but I thought Bening’s task was tougher, as Nic is written with strong masculine and feminine sides; she’s the head of household, breadwinner, decision-maker, with boyishly short hair, yet wears makeup (Jules doesn’t), shows more outward emotion, takes more care of her overall appearance … perhaps the character is just overwhelmed by the extent of the role she expects or is expected to fill, and just when she has the balance right, in comes Paul to upset everything. This conflict makes it all the more unsatisfying when the storyline ends so abruptly. A clean, complete resolution would be unrealistic, but there’s an “everything’s going to be fine” vibe to the closing scenes that I didn’t think was set up by anything that came before it.
Ruffalo was affecting in an understated role as the soft-spoken, warm-hearted Paul, living a twenty-year-old’s dream life only to realize through his discovery of an instant family that he doesn’t have the life he really wants. The script easily could have left him as simply a vehicle to expose the fragile structure holding the Allgood family together, but instead he was a fully-formed character who establishes different relationships with each of the four family members. Laser ended up with the least development – although he has one of the better lines when his mothers catch him and a friend watching an adult DVD, a scene that is about as awkward (in a good way) as any realistic movie can get – and his relationship with Paul is also underexplored, especially since he was the one who originally pushed his sister to call the sperm bank.
I can watch and appreciate a tough, complex, uncomfortable movie if there’s a decent payoff at the end – again, not necessarily a clear dénouement wrapped up in a bow, but one where the protagonists are, if not better off, at least materially changed because of the conclusion of the episode they’ve just experienced. The Kids Are All Right does so many things well, but the characters end their story under an illusion that nothing at all has changed. Maybe that’s the point, but for me, it took away from much of the reward of watching the first 90 minutes.
Apropos of nothing, the title of this film has put the Supergrass song “Alright
Next up: The 2011 remake of Jane Eyre
A good song to have stuck in your head.
I’ll be curious to see what you think of Wasikowska in Jane Eyre (haven’t seen it). I thought she was pretty good in The Kids Are All Right and terrible in Alice in Wonderland.
I would agree about the ending. It’s not a good or a bad ending, it just ends and the watcher is left holding the bag, trying to guess what happens. I don’t need everything spelled out for me, but I could have used a little more than what was offered. I thought it was one of the weaker best picture nominee’s, but I also thought Inception should have won…
One thing that my fiction writing profs pounded into my head is that in order to create a story, you have to depict change in some way, or all you have is something like a photograph. It can still be appealing, it’s just not a story. That’s how I looked at the film–the change in characters was unsatisfactory.
Haven’t seen this, but I’ve always (and am still) marginally interested in seeing this eventually.
Jane Eyre was fine- they seemed to do a decent job with it. My wife (the one that needs to toughen up RE: the boquerones) has read Jane Eyre multiple times (at least twice since we got married 13 years ago), liked it and found it to be pretty faithful to the book, though she wanted to hate it. I’ll be interested in what you have to say about it…
Child actors typically don’t impress me, but I really love Wasikowska. She’s fantastic in the first season of In Treatment.
I thought that Paul’s character as a swinging, successful bachelor was an attempt to objective the single male in much the same way many single males objective lesbians. There is no single male in existence with the coolness, fashion sense, job success, cooking skill and ability to connect with kids, women and co-workers that Ruffalo maintains in this movie, just like there is no lesbian in existence that lives out the trite fantasy of many males. That doesn’t necessarily add or subtract to the movie, I just thought it was an observation worth mentioning. And I didn’t realize the family’s name was “Allgood”, that’s a pretty blatant way to point out the obvious irony. Apparently the family name runner-up was “Justnormal”.
Enjoyed reading your review because a) I just saw this film for the first time the other night and had precisely the same reaction and b) I follow you and Eric on (the) Baseball Today and have been eager to see what you get up to over here on the blog. Back to TKAAR, The casting/acting and everything but the last ten minutes was really enjoyable- then…plumpf. Among other things I had an issue with the monologue Jules gives in front of the television on Joni’s last night (and after Paul’s last visit). I have a feeling that was one of the first scenes filmed because Moore seems uncomfortable with both the speech and her performance there. I also found the way she essentially dumps Paul (on the phone when she says “I’m a lesbian!” and hangs up on him) odd considering that the film makes a lot of effort to connect Jules and Paul on what feels like a deeper level (kindred spirits or something). Frustrating film experience, overall- the performances were all superlative, but the ending didn’t do them or the story justice.
I really did not like this movie at all. The first quarter-half of the movie is spent setting up three distinct plot dynamics: two teenaged children trying to understand themselves growing up in a challenging and unorthodox environment; a man coming to terms with sudden fatherhood; and the slow decay of a toxic relationship. So they choose to spend the final half of the movie following through on least interesting of the three. Oh, look, lesbians can have fractured relationships too. They’re just like “us” deep down! Then they bury any kind of character development they had going with the kids, turning them into caricatures of disaffected white middle-class youth. And, to top it off, the most interesting character in the movie (Ruffalo) ends up being nothing more than a foil for a failing relationship – they don’t even bother to give him any kind of denouement. Even worse, his character is reduced to being nothing more than a horrendously-cliched object of sexual desire. (Not to mention the subtle jab that all lesbians are really opportunistic heterosexuals once the opportunity arises.) Instead of challenging the audience with a portrait of a modern fractured American family, we’re treated to a sappy, cliched attempt to make us empathize with two fragile humans that, despite the best efforts of Moore and Benning, come off as decidedly one-dimensional.
Not to mention the subtle jab that all lesbians are really opportunistic heterosexuals once the opportunity arises
I noticed that too. If that’s really their intent, it’s pretty offensive.
Interesting that this would put a Supergrass song in your head when the film’s title directly references a track by The Who. Both songs are pretty great though.
” Its exploration of the nature of complex long-term relationships by using one we might (wrongly) consider “unusual” and making it look as usual as it should be is insightful and unflinching. ”
I don’t want to be that guy, but are you actually telling me that the lesbian relationship portrayed in “The Kids Are All Right”, or under any circumstance, is normative? Are we that blind to the film’s blatant neo-moralist agenda?