The Savages

Unflinchingly unsentimental and bitingly perceptive, Tamara Jenkins' second feature tackles the indignities of aging and the complexities of families with a strong sense of the comic potential in the everyday absurd. Linney and Hoffman are Wendy and Jon Savage, forty-ish siblings nursing the Peter Pan complexes their names suggest, suddenly forced to grow up and take charge when faced with the impending demise of their elderly, estranged father. (Bosco). Wendy is a tightly-wound failed playwright, doggedly filling in endless grant applications and pilfering office supplies in her miserable temp job, while Jon – a rumpled, saturnine college professor – is equally childish and narcissistic, refusing to commit to his girlfriend and slogging glumly through his overdue book on Bertolt Brecht. Linney and Hoffman are terrific, relishing every character flaw and unattractive outburst with a lovely finesse, but that pretty much goes without saying. These are Actors with a decidedly capital A, immensely comfortable in the kind of pin-sharp indie-dramedy genre that The Savages slots into nicely. It's a remarkably lucid, resonant film, sometimes devastatingly so, with a sparky, astringent wit and the occasional flash of keenly observed gallows humour alleviating any creeping bleakness. Less a black comedy than a comedy in shades of grey, of ordinariness and ugliness, the humour is never contrived, springing instead from ordinary characters and situations with an engaging and vital authenticity. [Laura Smith]