kelly_chambliss (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
kelly_chambliss) wrote2010-08-04 01:46 pm
kelly_chambliss) wrote2010-08-04 01:46 pm
Entry tags:
Movie Review
Last night, my partner and I went to see The Kids Are All Right, a film about a lesbian couple whose children (born via donor insemination) decide they'd like to meet their sperm donor. We wanted to see it because, well, we're a lesbian couple whose child was born through donor insemination. (And also because it's been getting good reviews and because we try to make a point of seeing films with lesbian content.)
[Aside for the foodies -- Afterward, we went to Veselka, a locally-legendary Ukranian diner. We had pierogi and potato pancakes, my partner had chilled borscht (I'm not a beet fan), and we shared a dessert called "kutya," a sort of pudding made of wheat berries, honey, nuts, raisins, and poppy seeds. Different and delicious (I'm a sucker for anything with poppyseeds in it.)]
Now, back to the film. My reactions are mixed. It's very well-acted and has some hilarious lines and sharp bits of satire. But. First of all, I'm wary of any mainstream Hollywood product that deals with GLBTQ issues (don't get me started on Brokeback Mountain.) And sure enough, this film smooths away any distinctiveness in the sexual identity by making the "alternative" family as Hollywood mainstream as possible: white, ethnically-homogeneous, upper-middle-class, suburban right down to the ranch house and the two cars in the drive. It's got all the things that bother me about the current push toward gay marriage: this insistence that "look -- we're no different, we're no threat, we're just exactly like the rest of you married, middle-class suburbanites." (This may be a necessary stage in the progress of social change, but it still bugs me.)
Except for the fact that both parents are women, the story could come straight out of any conventional heterosexual domestic comedy/drama. The gender roles are pretty 1950s-traditional: one mother, Nic (Annette Bening), is a doctor, a bit of a workaholic, driven, borderline alcoholic, strict and demanding with the children, condescending to her partner Jules (Julianne Moore). Jules is a housewife who gave up what little career she had to stay home with the children and who, now that one child is headed off to college and the other is 15, feels adrift and dissatisfied. As the story opens, she's trying to start a landscape design business; Nic is alternately encouraging and insufferably patronizing.
Then the kids decide to meet their dad. He's supposed to be a sort of laid-back charmer who marches to the beat of a different drum -- dropped out of college to knock about, rides a motorcycle, has great, casual sex with an equally casual, beautiful colleague. He's interested in food and cooking and now runs lovely, successful restaurant that is dedicated to encouraging a local, organic farm cooperative. The kids love him and vice versa. To help Jules with her new career, he offers to have her landscape the backyard of his new house, and the two begin a passionate affair. He starts to fall for her, the affair is discovered, and we hurtle toward the fairly predictable resolution.
The film can't quite decide whether it wants to be a sit-com with sex scenes, a lesbian version of a David Mamet play, or a California-Anglo version of a Woody Allen flick. Its handling of sex is coy, awkward, and unbalanced: we get R-rated, nude gay male sex (in a porn video) and a lot of R-rated, nude het sex, but the only lesbian sex scene a) takes place under a blanket, and b) is played for laughs. Then there's the disturbing subtext: the suggestion that the family is dysfunctional without the dad, who helps wean them all from some unhealthy family habits. And part of me thinks it's really too bad that both lesbian characters are fairly unlikeable. (Not that all lesbians have to be likeable, but there still aren't many widely-seen representations of them, and the few who do show up are often despicable in one way or another [c.f. Notes on a Scandal, for instance.])
Things I did like: the fact that both Bening and Moore allowed themselves to be shown as unglamorous, tired, and definitely middle-aged; we see every line and wrinkle in their faces, and yet, they're still vibrant and gorgeous and vital and desirable.
It's still impossibly hot and drought-ridden here. Argh.
ETA -- My thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sophia_gratia for linking me to this fascinating blog entry and discussion of the film by literary/cultural critic Jack (formerly Judith) Halberstam.
[Aside for the foodies -- Afterward, we went to Veselka, a locally-legendary Ukranian diner. We had pierogi and potato pancakes, my partner had chilled borscht (I'm not a beet fan), and we shared a dessert called "kutya," a sort of pudding made of wheat berries, honey, nuts, raisins, and poppy seeds. Different and delicious (I'm a sucker for anything with poppyseeds in it.)]
Now, back to the film. My reactions are mixed. It's very well-acted and has some hilarious lines and sharp bits of satire. But. First of all, I'm wary of any mainstream Hollywood product that deals with GLBTQ issues (don't get me started on Brokeback Mountain.) And sure enough, this film smooths away any distinctiveness in the sexual identity by making the "alternative" family as Hollywood mainstream as possible: white, ethnically-homogeneous, upper-middle-class, suburban right down to the ranch house and the two cars in the drive. It's got all the things that bother me about the current push toward gay marriage: this insistence that "look -- we're no different, we're no threat, we're just exactly like the rest of you married, middle-class suburbanites." (This may be a necessary stage in the progress of social change, but it still bugs me.)
Except for the fact that both parents are women, the story could come straight out of any conventional heterosexual domestic comedy/drama. The gender roles are pretty 1950s-traditional: one mother, Nic (Annette Bening), is a doctor, a bit of a workaholic, driven, borderline alcoholic, strict and demanding with the children, condescending to her partner Jules (Julianne Moore). Jules is a housewife who gave up what little career she had to stay home with the children and who, now that one child is headed off to college and the other is 15, feels adrift and dissatisfied. As the story opens, she's trying to start a landscape design business; Nic is alternately encouraging and insufferably patronizing.
Then the kids decide to meet their dad. He's supposed to be a sort of laid-back charmer who marches to the beat of a different drum -- dropped out of college to knock about, rides a motorcycle, has great, casual sex with an equally casual, beautiful colleague. He's interested in food and cooking and now runs lovely, successful restaurant that is dedicated to encouraging a local, organic farm cooperative. The kids love him and vice versa. To help Jules with her new career, he offers to have her landscape the backyard of his new house, and the two begin a passionate affair. He starts to fall for her, the affair is discovered, and we hurtle toward the fairly predictable resolution.
The film can't quite decide whether it wants to be a sit-com with sex scenes, a lesbian version of a David Mamet play, or a California-Anglo version of a Woody Allen flick. Its handling of sex is coy, awkward, and unbalanced: we get R-rated, nude gay male sex (in a porn video) and a lot of R-rated, nude het sex, but the only lesbian sex scene a) takes place under a blanket, and b) is played for laughs. Then there's the disturbing subtext: the suggestion that the family is dysfunctional without the dad, who helps wean them all from some unhealthy family habits. And part of me thinks it's really too bad that both lesbian characters are fairly unlikeable. (Not that all lesbians have to be likeable, but there still aren't many widely-seen representations of them, and the few who do show up are often despicable in one way or another [c.f. Notes on a Scandal, for instance.])
Things I did like: the fact that both Bening and Moore allowed themselves to be shown as unglamorous, tired, and definitely middle-aged; we see every line and wrinkle in their faces, and yet, they're still vibrant and gorgeous and vital and desirable.
It's still impossibly hot and drought-ridden here. Argh.
ETA -- My thanks to
sophia_gratia for linking me to this fascinating blog entry and discussion of the film by literary/cultural critic Jack (formerly Judith) Halberstam.
no subject
*clings to office air conditioning*