Testing time in family home

FILM REVIEW: THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Reviewed by Don Perlgut
Rating: ***

AMERICAN Jewish lesbian director Lisa Cholodenko’s latest film, The Kids Are All Right, can be classified in many ways. On one level, it is simply a very modern family story about a lesbian relationship in which each partner has a child from the same anonymous sperm donor.

It is also a very personal story by director (and co-writer) Cholodenko, based on her own life and her relationship with musician Wendy Melvoin.

Cholodenko has a four-year-old son, Calder, with an anonymous sperm donor, and the film is dedicated to Wendy and Calder.

But The Kids Are All Right — which was the closing night film at this year’s Sydney Film Festival — has not been relegated to fringe festivals, and has opened widely in Australian cinemas, largely because of its strong cast and very interesting characters.

Set in Los Angeles (where else?), Annette Bening plays Nic, a doctor married to Jules (Julianne Moore), with their two kids — Nic’s 18-year-old daughter Joni (Australian actress Mia Wasikowska) and Jules’ 15-year-old son Laser (Josh Hutcherson).

And yes, Joni is named after Joni Mitchell, whose famed album Blue features in an uncomfortable dinner scene.

Mark Ruffalo plays Paul, the biological father of the two teenagers and whose arrival in the film stimulates more than a little emotional discord and growth.

Nic and Jules are called “the moms” by their kids, and refer to each other as “chicken” and “pony”. They frequently use “California-speak” language, talking about their “highest selves” and read books with titles such as “The Presence Progress”. Although they live a very pleasant upper, middle-class lifestyle, there are also tensions in the family.

Nic is emotionally controlling and Jules is frustrated by her lack of a satisfying career. Laser has an unhealthy relationship with a guy named Clay, leading to the hilarious scene where his “moms” think he is gay.

Joni has just graduated from high school, and is about to leave home to attend college.

At age 18, Joni is legally able to search for her biological father, and at Laser’s urging does so.

So along comes father Paul, an earthy, non-intellectual, organic restaurant owner who is also an unattached ladies man and cannot help putting out the “vibe” to almost every attractive woman he meets.

Paul is, of course, totally unprepared for the emotional needs he encounters in this untraditional ­family and blunders through with a mixture of bluster, charm, naivete and surprise as to what the mothers and their children bring out in him.

The Kids Are All Right gives a good, straightforward portrait of modern teenagers, and certainly has the most complete portrayal of a lesbian relationship I can remember seeing in a mainstream film.

Bening, who has been so glamorous in films such as The American President, plays plain, brittle and tight in an emotional performance of wonderful subtlety, with Moore’s character emotionally looser but less grounded.

Cholodenko, who in interviews always talks about being Jewish, clearly based parts of both Nic and Jules on herself, but has removed any Jewish elements from the story, even though her co-writer is Stuart Blumberg, who produced and wrote the film Keeping the Faith.

It’s a mature and frequently uncomfortable film, and — considering it centres on a non-traditional household — portrays a remarkably conservative sensibility, coming down firmly on the side of the importance of family.

The film’s ending is not fully satisfying in the usual sense: as we leave this group, there is a feeling that the resolution is only temporary and new chapters await them all.

The Kids Are All Right is currently screening.