It's difficult to tell the moment at which rambling becomes absorbing in director Dennis Lee's tale of a very, very messed-up family.
The forward-fast button is starting to seem the best option when slowly you realise you've been drawn into this starry saga of brutality, neglect and repressed anger.
Told partly in flashback and partly in the present, it's the tale of the fall-ou
t and build-up to mother Julia Roberts' tragic death in a car accident – a smash which looks likely to send yet another generation of the family into mental freefall.
Dominating it all and so ghastly in his bullying as to be pretty much implausible is Willem Dafoe as the dad, a nutcase English teacher who terrorises his understandably-sensitive son while pretending to his work colleagues he's actually a decent soul.
Presumably characters exist who bind their families together by the terror they inspire; and Dafoe is presumably in that category – though from the comfort of your armchair it's difficult to see why anyone would tolerate him for a moment longer than they have to.
But then again, much is confusing in this film. Age gaps between siblings make it difficult to grasp who's who at times, especially when some of the characters are played by different actors in the past and present.
Even so, it does all come together somehow, and you start to hope that somehow, among alcoholic spouses and offspring who beat themselves up, someone somewhere might just find a little smattering of happiness in this grim and downbeat story.
Phil Hewitt ***
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