After THE FATHER, a portrait of an older gentleman with dementia (Anthony Hopkins in an Oscar winning role), Florian Zeller has shot another psychological portrait of a family in crisis. Successful lawyer Peter (Hugh Jackman) lives with his new, much younger wife Beth (very good in an unthankful role: Vanessa Kirby) and a new baby in a New York loft. He left behind his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) and a teenager, the angry and depressed Nicholas (Zen McGrath). After Nicholas has been skipping schools for several months, Kate asks Peter for help, and the family agrees that the boy should move in with Peter and Beth. From the outside, this seems to work at first, but under the surface, Nicholas‘ self-destructive behavior escalates until he attempts suicide. Even though the film is called THE SON, Zeller is mostly interested in the father, who battles with his guilt and his own relationship with his father and isn‘t able to see his son to an extent that is hard to sympathize with. Even when Nicholas, the taciturn teen, so eloquently tells him what he‘s missing: “I can‘t deal with my life. It hurts,“ no one gets the idea to take him to a psychiatrist. You want to shake the parents, but also the screenwriter and director, who doesn‘t trust his images, the always excellent actors (Laura Dern!) and the audience and spells out the smallest development in the uber-obvious dialogue with explanatory music.

Hendrike Bake (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy