The Savages: Movie Review (2007)

Written and directed by Tamara Jenkins, 105 minutes, rated R.

The new Tamara Jenkins movie, “The Savages,” is about a fractured family standing at the intersection of death and dementia. It’s a film about unresolved relationships trying to resolve themselves before death’s clock rings.

Billed as a dark comedy, the movie comes through with the darkness it promises, but not always in ways that the viewer might expect. Quirks abound, but so does the not-so-easy-to-hear truth about aging and dying--in one scene, for instance, the untidiness of the dying process is spelled out in one depressing, caustic rant.

The film stars Laura Linney as Wendy Savage, a difficult, struggling playwright living in New York City who works temp jobs on the side while applying for grants to fund her life and her unpublished productions.

She has a cat and a ficus tree that she loves, and a mate (Peter Friedman) 13 years older than she who is physically available to her, though not emotionally--he’s married. As such, Wendy resents him and she loves him. Or at least she thinks she loves him. For Wendy, who was abandoned by her mother as a child and then saddled with an abusive, distant father in Lenny (Philip Bosco), you suspect that love always has pushed away from her, increasingly by her own hand.

Meanwhile, her brother Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a frazzled, frumpy theater professor living in Buffalo, NY. He has his own problems--the inability to live in a clean environment being one of them, his fiercely competitive relationship with his sister being another. More significant is his unwillingness to wed his girlfriend (Cara Seymour) of three years, who now must return to her native Poland because her visa ran out. Though he’s willing to stand by and watch her go, he still loves her, so much so that he cries each time she makes him eggs.

In this film about two people who lack the tools to love, the focus narrows on Lenny, whose own girlfriend of 20 years has just dropped dead and who now needs his two estranged children to travel across country to tend to his needs. Since he’s suffering from dementia and his health is failing, those needs are significant, and they work to turn this shattered family inside out with guilt, rage and grief over the course of the ensuing weeks. After all, Wendy and Jon have long since lost touch with who Lenny is, and chances are, in his current condition, they won't ever know. That frustration complicates the movie considerably.

Excellent performances mark "The Savages," with Linney and Hoffman each navigating characters who could have become unlikable had they not been shaded with nuance. Throughout, there are glimpses of how Wendy and Jon might emerged as human beings had life not been so rough with them during their formative growing-up years. They’re damaged people, yes, but they are only savages by name.

Grade: B+