The Frame

Estranged siblings Jon and Wendy Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney) are forced to care for their aging and increasingly senile father when the woman he lives with dies, leaving him without a home. This is not a particularly exciting proposition to anyone involved – both siblings are playwrights (Jon much more successfully than Wendy, who has yet to get one of her plays produced), and both have based plays around their traumatic (or at least neglected) childhood. Neither has seen their father for years. But they make an effort, settling Dad into a nursing home. Writer/directer Tamara Jenkins treats Dad with a great deal of nuance despite his decidedly supporting role – he’s too far gone into dementia to be able to respond to Wendy’s attempts to pretend everything’s fine, but not so far gone that the hurt doesn’t creep into his face when Jon treats him as though he’s not even there. In addition to the parent-child issues, Wendy’s also dealing with her inability to get produced, to get out of a relationship with a married man, and to overcome her sense of inferiority in comparison with Jon – who is, meanwhile, figuring out what to do about his girlfriend leaving for her home in Eastern Europe. So many strands of story and so many levels of (broken) relationships could easily lead to a sloppy and depressing film, especially since Jon and Wendy spend so much time angry at each other. But Jenkins holds everything together very well, with a smart screenplay and steady directorial hand bringing out the best that Linney and Hoffman have to offer. Which is quite a lot.
Well Above Average