The Savages (2007)

Director Tamara Jenkins made audiences sit for nearly a decade for her follow-up to the hilarious dark comedy SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS, but it's been worth the wait. Like her previous film, THE SAVAGES is a sometimes-funny, sometimes-sad look at family dynamics, but this time around the sense of humor is more wry than riotous. Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman play Wendy and Jon Savage, a pair of siblings on the cusp of middle age. She's earning money in New York City as a temp as she writes an autobiographical play about their childhood, while he lives in Buffalo, teaching college and finishing a book on Ber...
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tolt Brecht. Their estranged father (Philip Bosco) lives across the country, but the Savages reluctantly rush to see him when they learn that he may not be able to take care of himself any longer. Jon and Wendy bicker over problems old and new as they try to figure out what's best for a man they barely know.

Like Noah Baumbach in THE SQUID AND THE WHALE and MARGOT AT THE WEDDING, writer-director Jenkins knows how to mine family dysfunction for both comedy and drama. Jon and Wendy tear into each other as only people connected by blood can, but their fighting feels entirely genuine, largely thanks to the performances of Linney and Hoffman. Though they'll get most of the buzz for their roles, character actor Bosco is heartbreaking as their aging father. Though his decline is difficult to watch, the actor's performance is absolutely mesmerizing.
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A pair of siblings are forced to set aside their discomfort with one another for the sake of their father in this low-key comedy drama from writer/director Tamara Jenkins. Wendy Savage (Laura Linney) is a struggling playwright living in New York City who works a day job to support herself and can't shake the feeling that she's failed as an artist. Wendy isn't especially happy about her love life either, gaining little self-esteem from her on-and-off affair with oversexed, married neighbor Larry (Peter Friedman). Wendy's anxieties about her writing career are intensified by the success of her brother, Jon (Philip ...
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Seymour Hoffman), who teaches theater history at a college in Buffalo, NY, and has published a number of books. While Jon's life seems fine on the surface, a case of writer's block has stalled work on his latest project, and he's deeply upset that his girlfriend is soon to leave the United States to return to her native Poland. Wendy and Jon don't get along and prefer not to see one another, but an unfortunate circumstance brings them together -- their father, Lenny Savage (Philip Bosco). Elderly Lenny has began showing signs of dementia, and shortly after he takes to smearing his feces on the walls of his Arizona home, his ailing long-term girlfriend suddenly dies. Wendy and Jon have little choice but to fly to Arizona and see what can be done for Lenny, but their long-simmering animosity makes it hard for them to deal with the realities of Lenny's condition. The Savages received its world premiere at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival.
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De enorm uit elkaar gegroeide broer (Seymour Hoffman) en zus (Linney) moeten plots de zorg dragen voor hun zieke vader, van wie ze in de loop der jaren erg vervreemd zijn. Plots weggeplukt uit hun eigen drukke leven, krijgen ze de tijd die ze nodig hebben om over zichzelf en al het andere in het leven na te denken. Pijnlijke momenten uit het verleden moeten worden uitgepraat, waarna het als een afgesloten episode in hun gedachten blijft bestaan. Maar dat blijkt niet zo simpel en er is veel tijd en geduld nodig om nader tot elkaar te komen.

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