Eric here, covering actor Jason Bateman’s second directorial feature, The Family Fang. Or, as we lovers of actresses like to better position it, the new Nicole Kidman! Nathaniel covered it in brief from Toronto but now it's in limited release.
The Family Fang is a bit of a reunion picture for Kidman: it’s written by her Rabbit Hole writer David Lindsay-Abaire and brought together by that film’s same producers. While Rabbit Hole ranks among the finest in the astonishingly large canon of Great Kidman Performances, she doesn’t get to scale the same heights here, mostly due to the limitations of the story and script.
Kidman plays Annie, a flailing Hollywood actress who returns home to take care of her injured brother Baxter (Bateman), who is recouping with their estranged parents (Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett) after a freak accident. We learn at the start of the picture that Annie and Baxter were used, from birth, as participants in their parents’ live, staged performance art pieces (Annie was Child A; Baxter, Child B). The parents caught on in art circles as avant-garde pioneers in the 70s, and the film traces their reunion all these years later...
Two interesting ideas float throughout the picture. The first, less successfully examined theme is using the children’s unorthodox upbringing as a metaphor for all the “damage” done by parents to their kids. While Lindsay-Abaire constructs this set-up smartly, and calibrates its playout well, it all feels a little obvious, with no particularly new insight. It’s your typical “must move on from the scars of your childhood” psychology.
The other big theme plays with the idea of “what is art?” and here the film becomes fun and playful. The flashbacks of the staged performance art pieces contain some subversive bent, and also add some texture to the family dynamic. There’s a pretty hilarious “documentary outtake” with two art critics discussing the Fangs contribution to performance art that approaches Guffman-esque beauty in both its sad truth and pointed comedy. When we see the elder Fangs try to recreate another staged stunt at a fast food restaurant, it fails and Lindsay-Abaire flags both its similarity to and difference from today’s typical YouTube video. The Fangs feel like both genuine artists and phonies at varying points in the film, and there’s genuine ideological tension in how director Bateman weighs these scenes.
The Family Fang towers high above Bateman’s first feature, Bad Words, which strained credibility and had a sadly desperate desire to be “edgy.” Bateman is both more relaxed and more assured this time, finding a nice melancholic tone that's right for the story. He also keeps the weakest dialogue (some therapeutic clichés espoused by each of the central characters) moving along as quickly as possible.
Then there’s Kidman. We all know she gives great face, and on that front, once again, she doesn’t disappoint. She’s peerless when playing a character’s transitions and dichotomies. But then we also all know Kidman delivers best with a killer director guiding her along, and because Bateman is still finding his footing, she isn’t pushed anywhere near as deep as she’s generally able to go. But it’s still a pleasure seeing her front and center in a picture where she doesn’t have to carry the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she delivers a smart, thoughtful performance.
Hopefully Bateman will continue to pursue quirkier and uncommercial films like this one. Maybe the film doesn’t fully gel into something large and moving, but it's an intelligent and interesting picture that really has its moments.
