The Savages

Rating R Formats DVD Genre drama Starring Laura Linney, Philip Seymour Hoffman Directed by Tamara Jenkins Publisher 20th Century Fox

The Savages tells the story of an estranged brother and sister coming together to deal with their father's slow decline to death. Their mother left them when they were both very young. Their father Lenny, played by veteran actor Philip Bosco, was an abusive and emotionally unavailable parent.

In the opening scene of the film Lenny's girlfriend's caretaker tells him that he forgot to flush the toilet. They argue about it and it escalates to the caretaker taking Lenny's cereal away until he agrees to flush the toilet. Lenny goes into the bathroom.

A few moments later, the caretaker opens the door to find that Lenny has finger painted the word "Prick" in his own feces on the wall. Writer / Director Tamara Jenkins has started this film off with a bang.

The small battles that the characters wage in this film continue on from the cereal incident.

Death in America is not something that is widely discussed in our public forums. Tamara Jenkins' semi-autobiographical approach to the material gives the film a truthful, while still comedic balance.

Laura Linney plays Wendy Savage, a woman who is having an affair with a married man. She works as a temp for a business in NYC while trying to advance her career as an aspiring playwright. She has stagnated in life when the film begins.

Linney's portrayal of Wendy Savage is good, but to the discerning eye you can see Wendy is a patchwork of some of Linney's other memorable performances: a mash up of Joan from The Squid and the Whale and Samantha from You can Count on Me.

Philip Seymour Hoffman plays Jon Savage, a teacher of theater with a doctorate in Philosophy. He is also in a relationship that has emotional limits due to the physical realities that he is in Buffalo New York and she is in Poland.

Hoffman, as usual, is really quite good in this role. The most notable thing is his ability to take a back seat to Linney and to not upstage her. As an actor, Hoffman has a real sense of how his fits into the story; not by fading into the background, but working as the script needs his character to work.

His character of Jon is written as a foil to Wendy's character, allowing her to have the emotional arc of the film. This is slightly unsatisfying. His character is riddled with flaws and you want to see him have a breakthrough. Although the little one we get at the end is nice, but we are left wanting more.

The Savage siblings have an interesting challenge in front of them having to deal with someone who was never there for them and now has no one. The argument of 'should we do this' is never really breached and that's a good thing because there are certain things that you are compelled to do because of family bonds.

What ends up happening is that Wendy is trying so hard to please her father and make him comfortable and it culminates to him not knowing who she is. All of this energy she has been expanding on her father goes nowhere.

Tamara Jenkins in this film sends her characters down paths that they themselves aren't sure why they are going down, but are driven to go down by their inner most desires and wants.

In that endless pursuit for a goal that keeps getting further away and for people who will never say "good job," or "thank you" lies the thematic push of this film and the question of what is the meaning of our life found through someone's death.

In the end, both characters realize that the family they have needed was already there in each other. The death of their father and the shared experience of his decline is what it took to bring them together.

The biggest critiques lie in the area where Tamara Jenkins is the weakest as a filmmaker, the visuals. Although this film does stand slightly apart from some of her other works, the visual style she is using is inconsistent; sometimes brilliant and other times non-existent.

She really nails the suburban feel in this movie much like she did with Slums of Beverly Hills. The Arizona retirement suburb that Lenny is living in at the beginning of this film is over exposed, bright, and picture perfect. It's the ideal location to escape to.

Meanwhile, Wendy and Jon live on the east coast in cold and dreary NYC and Buffalo, respectively. The contrast is interesting, but the problem is that her stylistic choice for Arizona is so much more interesting than it is for New York and we spend ¾ of the film there.

The boldest choice in the film was to go handheld with the photography to give, what she calls, a 'handmade or handcrafted feel". While that choice is by no means wrong or detrimental to the story, it doesn't lend for the most visually stimulating piece.

With that said, the acting in this film is impeccable and will maintain your focus through out the film. The script, while story light, is emotionally rich and the film's scenes are almost like vignettes sewn together to make the whole tapestry giving the film viewer a more meditative experience.

Tamara Jenkins is delving into deeper and more interesting waters with The Savages. If you are a fan of her work up to this point you will not be disappointed. If you aren't, now is the time to check her out because this film shows promise for the ones to come.