Film File - The Kids Are All Right

The family drama arrives on our shores trailing serious honours from a number of major film festivals around the world. As one of the most talked-about movie at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, and the winner of the Teddy Award for Best Feature Film at the 2010 Berlin International Film Festival, 'The Kids Are All Right’ is directed by Lisa Cholodenko from an original screenplay she co-wrote with Stuart Blumberg. Focusing on a very modern family dynamic, it centres around Nic and Jules (Annette Bening and Julianne Moore), a married lesbian couple sharing a suburban southern California home with their teenage children, Joni and Laser (Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson). Nic and Jules, or 'the Momses’ as their daughter calls them, gave birth to and raised their children, and built a family life for the four of them. As the 18-year old Joni prepares to leave for college, her 15-year-old brother presses her for a big favour. Laser wants to find their biological father, as the two teenagers were conceived by donor insemination. Reluctantly, Joni obliges her brother’s request and manages to make contact with their bio-dad, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), a laid-back restaurant owner. Against the odds, the kids grow to like their father’s mellow Californian attitude and lifestyle - a big contrast to their rigid upbringing where house rules governed their lives. Even Jules, who has plans to start a landscaping business, strikes up an unexpected rapport with Paul. In a short time, their biological father-stranger wafts his way into the fabric of the family - with good and bad results. Building on her previous low budget and well-received films - 'High Art’ and 'Laurel Canyon’ - Cholodenko takes her keen eye and ear for the cadences of modern life up to another level in this serious film with some excellent ensemble acting and a script full of subtlety and insight. Of the two 'Momses’, Benning is a revelation, and further cements her position as one of Hollywood’s most effective actresses. Communicating more with a furrowed brow or pained eyes than two pages of script could do, she anchors the film, always well-served by Moore’s equally solid presence. Ruffalo as the motorbike-riding chef with freewheeling attitudes get the more obvious dramatic moves as the renegade dad who arrives to slowly dismantle and upset the carefully constructed family dynamic. Does he mean to sabotage the 'Momses’ lives, or can he force this very American home to reassess itself in a changing world? That’s not to say that 'The Kids Are All Right’ is burdened by any sense of its own importance - far from it. This is a smart, funny and occasionally laugh-out-loud film - especially when the lesbian couple watch a gay men’s porn flick to get themselves steamy.