Family matters

I saw The Savages a month ago, but I hadn't had time to write a review until I was forced to work for five useless hours today. The movie brought forth a lot of memories surrounding my grandfather's death last year.

Here's what usually happens when Hollywood makes a film about generational strain.

Dad is a doddering fool prone to inappropriate comments. Manic siblings fight with each other and their father. People scream about past injustices. The offended parties apologize and hug just before Dad shuffles off to that mortal coil. "The Wind Beneath My Wings" plays at the funeral. Everyone sniffles.

Thankfully, The Savages avoids the pablum. Instead, writer/director Tamara Jenkins honestly examines that stage of life when middle-aged children must care for their parents. (Jenkins also showed a gift for capturing familial nuances in her debut feature, The Slums of Beverly Hills.) The Savages is darkly funny, superbly acted and uncomfortably real.

Ideally cast Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are the stunted Savage siblings, adrift Manhattanite Wendy and Buffalo-based Brecht-loving academic Jon. When their father, Lenny (Philip Bosco), starts descending into dementia, Wendy and Jon cannot decide if it's an alarm or a crisis. "We're in orange," she says. To Jon, they're only in yellow - no need to worry until code red. In the next scene, as she's having her nails painted red, Lenny's girlfriend dies.

Wendy takes neurotic to new levels. Stealing painkillers from the dead, an act that leaves Jon aghast, is the least of it. She also sleeps with a married man, exaggerates medical conditions and isn't exactly honest about a writing grant. (The disclosure of the grant's source is one of the most hilarious in The Savages.)

She's also heartbreaking in her attempts to do right by a man who rarely was there for her. Wendy tries - oh, how she tries - to locate a proper nursing-home setting. She's the one who goes through her father's belongings in Arizona, where she finds random school photos and childhood artwork. Jenkins and Linney play the scene perfectly: no music, no overly long chatter, just a surprised, moved smile when Wendy realizes she mattered to her father.

Jon seems more put together than his melodramatic sister - but is it maturity or lack of emotion? He doesn't let details bog him down, simply bringing their father to Buffalo and finding a nursing home right away.

Jon is in a disheveled state, though. His house is a mess, he can't commit to his girlfriend, he can't finish his book, and he looks like an uncomfortable schlub. Hoffman gives us glimpses of Jon's buried feelings, notably when the departing girlfriend cooks for him, but mostly Jon's as stuck as his sister.

The Savages wouldn't work without Bosco's nuanced, complex Lenny. The character seems easy to hate, estranged from his children and dismissive of the minority health-care workers who assist him. Yet it's impossible not to feel sadness as Lenny struggles with his slipping acuity. He doesn't know what state he's in; he can't even distinguish between a hospital and a hotel.

The Savages ends tentatively, with small changes but no grand statements about family ties. It's sad, it's funny - it's life.