The Kids Are All Right

With The Kids Are All Right, writer/​directer Lisa Cholo­denko announces her­self as an assured film­mak­er with a keen eye for cul­tur­al obser­va­tion and characterisation.

Jules (Julianne Moore) and Nic (Annette Ben­ing) are a hard­work­ing cou­ple who prize free­think­ing fam­i­ly val­ues. Like all devot­ed par­ents, their pri­ma­ry con­cern is what’s best for their chil­dren Joni (Mia Wasikows­ka) and Laser (Josh Hutch­er­son), and as a result their rela­tion­ship has begun to show signs of wear. Cri­sis is com­pound­ed when Joni turns 18 and younger broth­er Laser con­vinces her to track down their pre­vi­ous­ly anony­mous sperm donor, Paul (Mark Ruf­fa­lo), a com­mit­ment­phobe whose pater­nal instincts extend about as far as his organ­ic veg patch.

Despite ini­tial reser­va­tions, Paul is wel­comed into the fam­i­ly home and afford­ed space to bond with his estranged off­spring. But while Nic main­tains her wari­ness of Paul’s appar­ent flak­i­ness and breezy machis­mo, Jules proves to be slight­ly more open to his charms. The kids might be all right, but true to life it’s the adults you have to wor­ry about.

Tack­ling the end­less com­plex­i­ties of mar­riage, par­ent­hood, grow­ing up and get­ting old head on, Cholo­denko has hand-craft­ed a sin­cere por­trait of domes­tic life that is com­pas­sion­ate, well observed and nev­er con­de­scend­ing. The film’s most sig­nif­i­cant tri­umph, how­ev­er, is that while uni­ver­sal in its scope it is inti­mate in its focus: note per­fect per­for­mances all round allow Cholo­denko to give each character’s pri­vate con­cerns their own space and merit.

This is real life, authen­tic and uncom­pro­mised. Fits of spiky humour are del­i­cate­ly bal­anced with moments of betray­al and repen­tance, while the cen­tral les­bian sub­text is nei­ther obscured nor exploit­ed to some social­ly prag­mat­ic end. Indeed, the empha­sis is very much on the col­lec­tive strength of this par­tic­u­lar unit, as opposed to indi­vid­ual inse­cu­ri­ties or weaknesses.

Going against the grain of for­mu­la­ic Hol­ly­wood con­vey­or-belt rom-coms, The Kids Are All Right is a refresh­ing­ly adult twist on the day-to-day dys­func­tions of the mod­ern family.