In Queensland cinemas Thursday July 24 [M]

Director: Tamara Jenkins

Runtime: 114mins

Tamara Jenkins last feature, 1998’s Slums Of Beverly Hills, was a semi-autobiographical comedy-drama laced with the cute but inescapable quirkiness of ’90s indie cinema. Ten years on and her latest writing and directorial effort, The Savages, is a masterful step up in terms of naturalism and emotional engagement. The quirks are more relatable, the dialogue more incisive, and the involvement of Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman helps complete the picture, the pair providing superbly believable performances.

Linney is Wendy Savage, a frustrated playwright involved in a dead-end affair with a middle-aged man who brings his golden retriever along to their tawdry lovemaking sessions. Hoffman is her brother Jon, an academic expert on radical theatre who can’t commit to his Polish girlfriend, causing her to leave America because she can’t get a visa. Both of them appear somewhat blind to their respective situations, so when their estranged father Lenny (an excellent Philip Bosco) needs help – encroaching dementia and his eviction from an Arizona retirement community being the cause – Wendy and Jon have to face up to a few responsibilities.

The beauty of The Savages is the way it takes an incredibly difficult situation – the physical and mental deterioration of an aging parent, something that most people fear and worry about at some stage – and uses it to explore family dynamics in a natural way; both witty and sad, but never cruel. The family history of Wendy, Jon and their father Lenny is hinted at as being painful, but it’s never explicitly detailed. There’s no need for exposition, as the characters themselves provide so much background insight.

Jon and Wendy attempt to get their father admitted to nursing homes, Jon staying bluntly practical while Wendy looks for more idyllic aged care facilities. Lenny meanwhile continues down his path of memory loss, remaining irascible the entire time and initiating many of the story’s darkly funny moments. The way the siblings struggle with their father’s situation feels admirably authentic, and while there’s no huge dramatic events or revelations, the time spent in Jon and Wendy’s company feels rewarding by the film’s end.

Jenkins provides plenty of greatly written character moments throughout the story (Wendy’s encounter with a black nursing home attendant subtly skewering white Americans who think they know everything comes to mind), and she also enriches the story with her handling of setting (the Arizona retirement community is portrayed as a heavenly octogenarian Pleasantville – an illusory ideal completely incompatible with Lenny’s affliction). But there are so many little nuggets of humour, pain and truth in this film it would do it a disservice to list any more. It also ends on a surprisingly uplifting and hopeful note given that it deals with such an uncomfortable topic, one that walks a fine line between reasonable and wish fulfilling, but not in a way that detracts from the story. 

It’s not a crowd-pleasing indie like Juno, but essentially if you like great characters and know (or want to know) how to take life as it comes – the good and the bad and everything in-between – you should find something to admire in this rich and honest little movie.

****½

TOPHER HEALY

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