The Savages

A film starring the wonderful (but seemingly rarely used) Laura Linney and the exceptional (but remarkably overused) Philip Seymour Hoffman. The movie follows the last few months of father Lenny Savage and his two children Wendy and Jon. The story is more about the children and their reaction to Lenny's sinking into dementia than about Lenny himself - he is always something of an onlooker. This is not a close family. The film opens with Lenny in Arizona, Wendy in New York and Jon in Buffalo. None seem terribly successful, none seem to want to talk about their lives together - in fact they are leading separate and rarely connecting lives. Only one sentence is said about Lenny's wife, Wendy & Jon's mother. The film opens with the death of Lenny's long time girlfriend and it becomes clear he cannot cope alone. What are the children to do with him? We move through guilt, anger, disappointment, frustration - and without sentimentality touch upon all those things that worry us all as we grow old - how would we deal with a parent or loved one who cannot cope independently. This is movingly handled, and with humour, darkly. It does, unusually, deal with a family situation where love does not come naturally, there are clearly bad aspects to the childhoods of both Wendy and Jon - but these aren't paraded like a psycho-analysts clinic, they are skirted around, left hanging unspoken, and referred to only on the edge. This is realistic. I would rate this much more highly than Julie Christie's Away From Her. Go see it - Rating 8/10