Review: The Savages - 2007 Sundance Film Festival

Nine years was far too long to wait for Tamara Jenkins's sophomore feature, The Savages, her astonishingly mature follow-up to the quirky coming-of-age comedy The Slums of Beverly Hills. The time must have been well-spent, because The Savages feels like the work of a far more seasoned director, and manages to land a KO punch squarely in the jaw of the prototypical "indie" character drama that's become the hallmark of the Sundance Film Festival. The Savages has depth, resonance, and meaning. It delves into the scary heart of our deepest fears about aging, and it does so from a point of view that is honest and human.

Laura Linney stars as Wendy, an anxiety-prone wannabe playwright with a married boyfriend and a pointless cubicle temp job. Her estranged father (Philip Bosco) has begun to slip into dementia. When Dad's girlfriend dies leaving him homeless, Wendy and older brother John (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a PhD specializing in Bertolt Brecht, fly to Arizona tasked with the burden of making the kind of hard decisions that mark the final passage into adulthood. In the parking lot of a swank retirement community that won't take Dad because he's too far gone, John reminds Wendy that people are dying inside. And there's nothing that any amount of landscaping or bingo or carefully chosen room decorations can do about it.

Adult brother-sister siblings are rare onscreen; in fact, the only other recent movie that's captured this relationship with any accuracy is You Can Count On Me, which starred Linney as a tightly-wound older sister. Here, she's the younger sibling, but Wendy thinks she should be the responsible one--and that dynamic rings so true for sisters. Brothers run around with their shirts untucked and live on ramen noodles well into their 30s and have disorganized relationships. They're not the ones who are expected to take capable charge of end-of-life decisions. That's supposed to be women's work--but Wendy's lost from square one.

Wendy is unmoored by the growing realization of her brother's competence and tender compassion. As the story progresses, her eyes grow wider and blanker, silently screaming "I don't want to be here" even as her sense of guilt turns her into stone. John's stoic acceptance of the situation and confident decision-making infuriates her, and she ends up telling a stupid, childish lie in an attempt to wrestle some control over her part in the family psychodrama. She's in real danger of not making it, of checking out forever and condemning herself to an empty life, but the pull of family--however screwed up--might just be what saves her.

The film's portrayal of the devastation and heartbreak that dementia wreaks on the children of the afflicted is spot on, thanks to a superb performance by Bosco, an underrated actor who shows admirable restraint in some very difficult situations. In Slums, Jenkins showed an acute insight into the way a teenage girl's body betrays her, and here she turns that same perception onto the gross indignities suffered by the aging. As John puts it, "Death is gassy."

There's a standout scene early in the film when Wendy's flying Dad back to Buffalo, where John has found him a bed in a nursing home. After loudly demanding that Wendy take him to the bathroom NOW, Dad shuffles painfully down the narrow aisle, Wendy carefully holding his arms, looking him in the eye but unable to hide the fact that she wishes this wasn't happening. He looks down at his feet, in the classic "someone is about to pee their pants" shot, and as he keeps walking, the suspense is excruciating. He stops; his eyes widen, then Wendy looks down. He hasn't lost control, it's just that his pants have fallen down because Wendy didn't like the suspenders he was wearing. And then Jenkins cuts away for a shot aching with poignant horror: Dad in the middle of the aisle, wearing adult diapers. He's incontinent and unloved , and Jenkins and Bosco are brave enough to give it to us straight and unvarnished.

As sad and serious as it is, The Savages has some wonderfully funny moments, including some physical humor from Hoffman in a weighted neck brace that adds some welcome leaven. Hoffman and Linney exceed expectation with nuanced performances that are never showy, even in the most dramatic moments. Jenkins knows how to get out of the way of the story, and rarely missteps. A scene between Wendy and one of Dad's caregivers falls a little flat, as does an odd bit with John's Polish ex-girlfriend and some eggs that inexplicably make him cry, but these are minor quibbles. The Savages sets a high bar for Sundance '07 and marks a standout return by a director who's the real deal.