Director(s): Tamara Jenkins. Screenplay: Tamara Jenkins. Cast: Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Philip Bosco, Peter Friedman, Gbenga Akinnagbe and Cara Seymour. Distributor: Fox Searchlight Pictures. Runtime: 113 min. Rating: R.
Tamara Jenkins' new film, The Savages, deals with the ubiquitous dilemma of dealing with the elders when they can no longer care for themselves. While the film takes a different approach then the brilliant aesthetic qualities and profound themes of Away from Her, Jenkins' work clearly stresses this as its theme, its modus operandi a more comical yet nevertheless biting portrayal of a similar situation to that as Sarah Polley's work. It is one, conversely, about two siblings, playwrights Jon and Wendy (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney), forced to roadblock their "lives" in favor of taking care of their Dementia-diagnosed father (Peter Friedman); all three go into the whole nursing home crisis, the narrative dutifully dramatizing their plight through comedy and extraordinarily well framed character development. However, it's Hoffman and Linney's pas de deux, bent to Jenkins' acutely stinging writing, that is what robs the show—despite the fact that, unfortunately, it is aestheticized with a buoyant, often un-moving manner. Jenkins can't exactly avoid genre conventions—moments are contrived and predictable—yet The Savages has this bleak, rare sting that comes to it all in a remarkable fashion; while at first light, there is a cached profoundity to the film, ultimately the film's true virtue.
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