It's been over 10 years since Lisa Cholodenko directed Ally Sheedy in her career's best performance; however, Kids proves she's still an estimable director of actors. The achievement is less notable here since I already knew Annette Benning was a goddess; and she's wonderful in the little box Cholodenko has put her in. On the other hand, although I like Julianne Moore, in this movie, I thought she came off a bit shrill. There were also moments of fake emotionality — enthusiastically performed moments of fake emotionality, true.
I watched this movie right after finally catching up with the last season of Six Feet Under, a show I used to look forward to watching, usually with my boyfriend. Years later, after having not been in the United States for 8 years, I found I was much less tolerant of the tropes of the "dysfunctional family" as dramatized on television and in movies. In fact, I found myself not wanting to watch those characters at all and came to really want to yell at Ruth/Mrs Fisher who used to be one of my favorite characters.
I thought: If you hate each other so much then why don't you get away from each other? Nate and Brenda? OMG! And WTF? Same deal with David and Keith. Why exactly were they together and what in hell made them think they could raise kids? What social-service agency gave them the go-ahead? I got no pleasure out of any of them, other than that of seeing "old friends" again. And just like the moment after getting together with "friends" from high school, I remembered why I never needed to again.
Kids reminded me of Six Feet Under: A similar sort of dysfunctional family's bitching and sniping at one another, if at a much lower and tolerable pitch. Barely tolerable. Cholodenko, not surprisingly, directed one episode of Six Feet Under. Are there still shows like Six Feet Under on TV in which unpleasant, if complex and interesting, characters make the lives of their loved ones complete hell? There was definitely an ideological itch being scratched which is either no longer there or no longer noticeable in 2011, at least for me.
So, Kids seems a bit "out of time" to me despite its modern marriage. Maybe that's why I had difficulty believing much about the settings and the background stories of any of the characters. Did you believe, or remember even, for longer than a few seconds, that Annette Benning's character was a doctor? Didn't think so. Did I believe that Julianne Moore's could be a landscape designer? That she's reached her age and doesn't know what she wants to do with her life? That Mark Ruffalo's character owns a restaurant and rides a motorcycle (sort of, more or less)? Or, that the latter two really had an affair? Really? Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor? WHAT?! Director, please.
The extent I believed anything in this movie depended on the performances and Cholodenko gets some good ones out of everyone except Ruffalo, whose perpetual bemusement mirrored my own. But, it wasn't enough for me and these gaps made even more obvious Cholodenko's lack of skill in all the other areas of filmmaking, not least of which is the ability to structure a narrative to provide more than just moments of thespian skill, however emotional, and to provide an overall consistent tone and to back it all up with a believable world for the characters to live inside.
So, mad props for direction of actors, and a lot of head-scratching and eye-rolls for everything else.
I watched this movie right after finally catching up with the last season of Six Feet Under, a show I used to look forward to watching, usually with my boyfriend. Years later, after having not been in the United States for 8 years, I found I was much less tolerant of the tropes of the "dysfunctional family" as dramatized on television and in movies. In fact, I found myself not wanting to watch those characters at all and came to really want to yell at Ruth/Mrs Fisher who used to be one of my favorite characters.
I thought: If you hate each other so much then why don't you get away from each other? Nate and Brenda? OMG! And WTF? Same deal with David and Keith. Why exactly were they together and what in hell made them think they could raise kids? What social-service agency gave them the go-ahead? I got no pleasure out of any of them, other than that of seeing "old friends" again. And just like the moment after getting together with "friends" from high school, I remembered why I never needed to again.
Kids reminded me of Six Feet Under: A similar sort of dysfunctional family's bitching and sniping at one another, if at a much lower and tolerable pitch. Barely tolerable. Cholodenko, not surprisingly, directed one episode of Six Feet Under. Are there still shows like Six Feet Under on TV in which unpleasant, if complex and interesting, characters make the lives of their loved ones complete hell? There was definitely an ideological itch being scratched which is either no longer there or no longer noticeable in 2011, at least for me.
So, Kids seems a bit "out of time" to me despite its modern marriage. Maybe that's why I had difficulty believing much about the settings and the background stories of any of the characters. Did you believe, or remember even, for longer than a few seconds, that Annette Benning's character was a doctor? Didn't think so. Did I believe that Julianne Moore's could be a landscape designer? That she's reached her age and doesn't know what she wants to do with her life? That Mark Ruffalo's character owns a restaurant and rides a motorcycle (sort of, more or less)? Or, that the latter two really had an affair? Really? Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actor? WHAT?! Director, please.
The extent I believed anything in this movie depended on the performances and Cholodenko gets some good ones out of everyone except Ruffalo, whose perpetual bemusement mirrored my own. But, it wasn't enough for me and these gaps made even more obvious Cholodenko's lack of skill in all the other areas of filmmaking, not least of which is the ability to structure a narrative to provide more than just moments of thespian skill, however emotional, and to provide an overall consistent tone and to back it all up with a believable world for the characters to live inside.
So, mad props for direction of actors, and a lot of head-scratching and eye-rolls for everything else.