The Kids Are All Right

Annette Bening (left) & Julianne Moore (right)

 

 

 

 

Clockwise from near left: Bening, Moore, Josh Hutcherson, Mia Wasikowska, & Mark Ruffalo

Ruffalo (left) & Hutcherson (right)

Bening

Moore

The Kids are All Right is director Lisa Cholodenko's third feature film. The critics have been kindly not mentioning the execrable direct-to-video adaptation of Dorothy Allison's Cavedweller. The other, better films are High Art (1998)  (featuring a grown-up Ally Sheedy and a breakthrough role for Patricia Clarkson) and Laurel Canyon (2002) (featuring Frances McDormand, Kate Beckinsale, & Christian Bale).

What I love about The Kids are All Right and, more so, Laurel Canyon: Cholodenko allows her characters to explore, push themselves out of their comfort zones, fuck up, without the typical Hollywood result of disaster, unmitigated regret/remorse, moral lashing. Not that there aren't consequences for daft, or selfish, actions, but those consequences are in proportion to the offense. A long time ago a friend said to me, "In the real world forgiveness is more important than justice." This is the feeling I get from a Cholodenko film.

Cholodenko films also advocate for the messy, uncategorizable  nature of human sexuality. In The Kids are All Right lesbian Moore has a fling with straight man Mark Ruffalo (sophomoric aside: he is hot! in this movie). In Laurel Canyon, Beckinsale fools around with her boyfriend's mother (McDormand). High Art deals with a young, ostensibly straight, female photographer (Sheedy) exploring her sexuality with a Fassbinder-esque actress (Clarkson). Oh, and my favorite narrative thread in The Kids are All Right is the erotica the "moms" use as an adjunct to sex: a gay male porn video.

But The Kids are All Right is clearly aimed at the straight marketplace (whether they go or not). A good litmus test for this is how sex is displayed. In a film that includes both gay and straight sex scenes is the straight scene more graphic or do both types get treated with equal excitement, joy, pleasure, skin? In The Kids are All Right the single sex scene between Moore and Bening is conducted under a blanket. While Ruffalo's sex scene with his female business partner is far more graphic (and more fun). I can't tell you how often I've seen this disparity in movies that are, ostensibly, about gay characters/themes.