Irish Film Institute -THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

THE KIDS ARE ALL RIGHT

Director: LISA CHOLODENKO

105 minutes| U.S.A.| 2010| Colour| D-Cinema


Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko, who impressed with her sharply-observed independent productions High Art (1998) and Laurel Canyon (2002), now makes a successful bid to reach a much wider audience with The Kids Are All Right, her extremely funny and mildly subversive take on alternative family values. Working with writer Stuart Blumberg and a terrific cast headed by Julianne Moore, Annette Bening and Mark Ruffalo, Cholodenko has fashioned a smart comic drama that’s one of the most enjoyable films of the year.

Moore and Bening play a lesbian couple who’ve been together for over twenty years and have two teenage kids they conceived with the help of the same anonymous sperm donor. Complications arise when the kids decide to contact their biological father (Ruffalo), which worries the controlling Bening. All the tensions, awkwardness and frustrations of this semi-farcical situation are beautifully captured by Cholodenko and her team, especially in two extended dinner party scenes. It’s refreshingly non-judgemental and frequently hilarious. (Notes by Peter Walsh).

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