USA
4*
Director:
Lisa Cholodenko
Screenwriters:
Lisa Cholodenko
Stuart Blumberg
Director of Photography:
Igor Jadue-Lillo
Running time: 104 minutes
The other night, I watched an episode from the fourth season of the television series Queer as Folk. The lesbian couple, Lindsey and Melanie, had been together for many years and ont he verge of having their second biological child. Unexpectedly, an arrogant but brilliant chauvinist artist arrives and philanders his way into Lindsey’s panties – Lindsey clearly enjoys the sex but doesn’t see herself as any less of a lesbian. Nonetheless, this kind of sex puts a tense question mark above her sexuality.
There is a similar dilemma at the heart of the drama in The Kids Are All Right, a film by Lisa Cholodenko, who openly self-identifies as a lesbian. I mention her sexuality, because I think I would have struggled to reconcile the events of the film with my idea of realistic character development had anyone but a lesbian director made the film. Whether the viewer is gay or straight, the problem of strict definitions regarding human sexuality is still a biggy and very often, we will be confronted with situations we have absolutely no experience with, either in real life or in the lives we see on screen.
Paul, the “other man” in this film, is no random sleazy artist – he is the two children’s biological father and has never had contact with anyone in this family until the start of the film. He is single and likes to sleep around, with his employees and with other people he meets at his restaurant. He has a rebellious streak and when his children decide to contact him, he jumps at the opportunity to see what life might have been like in some other realm of possibility.
Obviously, he never would have been a part of this family. He is the father of two children, technically a step-brother and a step-sister, whose mothers are their parents. But he tries to be a part and successfully manages to get Jules, who is losing faith that her wife Nic still loves her, into bed.
Julianne Moore and Annette Bening are delightful as the mothers of two children who simply wanted to meet their dad because they had the means to track him down. But it is Annette Bening in particular who shines as Nic, Jules’s tough-skinned but not insensitive partner, and I think this representation of an unconventional family with many problems, not unlike any other family, is necessary and convincing for the most part.
However, I take issue with the representation of lesbian fornication. Granted, I know nothing about it, but just as I do not choose to watch girl-on-girl pornography, I can’t really comprehend the thinking behind Nic and Jules’s decision to watch gay porn while having sex. Now, perhaps it problematises sexuality right from the get-go and that is probably the justification, but it becomes a plot point that their children address but neither they nor we get any satisfactory explanation for this beyond the “fluidity of sexuality” or something equally vague.