THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT
Written and directed by Lisa Cholodenko
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Plenty of movies strive for topicality, but occasionally something like The Kids Are All Right slaps you in the face with the world you’re actually living in. The first sperm bank in the U.S. opened in the early 70s—almost two generations ago—but this is the first movie I can think of that’s treated artificial insemination not as some sort of gimmick for comedy or melodrama but as an established fact of American life. Eighteen-year-old Joni (Mia Wasikowska of Alice in Wonderland) and her 15-year-old brother, Laser (Josh Hutcherson), decide to track down their common biological father without consulting their mothers. They find him to be an easygoing restaurateur and organic farmer named Paul (Mark Ruffalo), and as he begins to insinuate himself into the family’s life—to the fascination of Laser’s mom, Jules (Julianne Moore), and the growing anger and dismay of Joni’s mom, Nic (Annette Bening)—Cholodenko exposes the confused feelings of a family toward someone who’s part of them yet a complete stranger. As Jules tells Paul, “I just keep seeing my kids’ expressions in your face.”
At the same time, Cholodenko—who’s a lesbian herself, and has with her partner a four-year-old son by an anonymous sperm donor—seems especially interested in how Joni and Laser discover themselves sexually in a gay family. Much of the comedy comes at the expense of Nic and Jules, who like to spice up their humdrum sex life with gay-male porn videos (they accidentally hit the TV remote and blast the soundtrack through the house) and automatically assume that Laser is experimenting sexually with a male buddy (in fact he’s increasingly alienated by the guy’s macho bullshit). When Jules stumbles onto the boys watching one of the porn videos in stunned disbelief, it’s hard to tell who’s supposed to feel more busted, them or her. Joni has a rocky friendship too, with a sex-obsessed girl pal, and she isn’t sure how to behave with the shy male friend she has a crush on. Both Joni and Laser look to be straight, but they’re almost comically unimpressed by their mothers’ alternative lifestyle; the most important thing they’ve picked up from their parents is that love and devotion are more important than sex, a thoroughly traditional notion.
Each movie communicates its sense of the family pretty clearly through its setting, which seems appropriate when you consider how kids are affected by their environment. In Dogtooth it’s the fenced-in yard, equally good at confining children and dogs; like inbred animals, Son, Older Daughter, and Younger Daughter are handsome but crazy, and one can easily imagine them having to be put down at some point. In The Kids Are All Right, it’s the organic farm tended by Paul and his backyard, the landscaping of which Jules takes on as a professional project. There’s a great emphasis on nurturing plants, and the fact that Joni and Laser are such demonstrably good people speaks to the power of air and sunlight. The movie ends with Joni going off to college, a quotidian scene whose heartache will be familiar to many children and parents. The family in The Kids Are All Right may be wonderfully healthy and the family in Dogtooth desperately sick, but both movies come down to the same truth: you never really know how successful any family has been until it breaks apart. v
The Kids Are All Right Opens Friday at Century 12 and CineArts 6, Showplace ICON, Landmark’s Century Centre, Renaissance Place, and River East 21.
