Sundance. The Savages.

"With one full day in the books the talk around Main St is about Tamara Jenkins's The Savages," writes Jason Guerrasio at Filmmaker. "Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman (could you think of a better tandem?) play the siblings who finally have to give a damn about their father (stage vet Philip Bosco) after years of non-communication when he's diagnosed with dementia."

"I know that sounds serious and they do take the subject matter seriously, but there's some sharp and very dark comedy at work here," writes AICN's Quint.

Updated through 1/26.

It's "the first hit of Sundance 2007," announces Nicole Sperling at the Risky Biz Blog.

"Note-perfect," writes Ray Pride, "an unlikely fusion of the comedic precision of Annie Hall and the melancholy humanism The Death of Mr Lazarescu, and I mean that in the most admiring and positive fashion. Line for line, The Savages has some of the most formidable comic dialogue I've been fortunate enough to hear in ages."

For Zoom In's Annie Frisbie, it "manages to land a KO punch squarely in the jaw of the prototypical 'indie' character drama that's become the hallmark of the Sundance Film Festival. The Savages has depth, resonance, and meaning, and delves into the scary heart of our deepest fears about aging, and it does so from a point of view that is honest and human."

A "stunner," declares Glenn Kenny. "It also renders superfluous the in-the-works film version of The Corrections."

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This in from Craig Phillips...

While The Savages doesn't need a lot of publicity, given it will be distributed by Fox Searchlight (date TBD) and has two superb actors to help promote it, I still felt compelled to write a bit about it.

Tamara Jenkins's film begins in Sun City, Arizona, the surreal senior community, the superficially perfect coldness of which Jenkins captures perfectly, where dear old dad Savage (Philip Bosco, heartbreakingly real, never breaking character to get sympathy votes from the audience), suffering from the onset of dementia finds himself suddenly alone. Cue his estranged children: Laura Linney's Wendy is a temp who dreams of a playwriting career, and older brother Philip Seymour Hoffman's Jon is a drama professor in Buffalo. They have to figure out what to do with him. If this sounds like a recipe for a maudlin family drama, don't fret. The Savages is executed pitch-perfectly. Jenkins's first film, the slightly rawer but still wonderful Slums of Beverly Hills, was also a dysfunctional family comedy, and here again she reveals a keen and very patient eye for building scenes and letting them flow naturally, along with an equally sharp ear for dialogue.

While I at first had trouble accepting the two leads as siblings - given their physical dissimilarities - it didn't take long for their lovingly dysfunctional rapport to seem so natural that I fully believed they had a long history together. Linney is fast becoming - has become, really - one of our finest comedically empathetic actresses and The Savages may have presented her with her best role yet. She's darling but never cloying (two moments where she works out to an exercise video are priceless). Hoffman gives his occasionally self-righteous professor - a character we've seen multiple times before - a dimensionality and engenders our sympathy,  as he overcomes his competitive streak with his sister, his resentment of his father, and inability to commit - all things we can relate to, certainly. The script gives us so many fully realized characters, each flawed in their own ways, that it makes you realize what a crock of shit most dysfunctional family dramas are.

One side note: I admit to also being pleased at the way the film believably wove in the way pets become extended family, as well as an extension of one's character (in how they're treated). Besides a touching final shot, Jenkins's answered the question that popped up in my head early on in the film, a question only a cat owner would think of: Who the hell is taking care of her cat while she's gone? It answers this, and quite well. Small but satisfying proof of how a filmmaker has thought everything through, with the greatest care.

End note: While I was disappointed Jenkins and her actors weren't at the "morning after" (the premiere) screening, they were probably up late the night before, and since I liked the film, all is forgiven. Still, if I see Laura Linney here at some point, that'd be all the better.

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David Carr gets a fun quote from Jenkins.

"Tamara Jenkins excels more at maximizing individual moments here than at developing a meaty storyline," writes Variety's Todd McCarthy.

Kim Voynar at Cinematical: "The script is taut and honest, the dialogue sharp and witty, and the performances spot-on. There are no easy answers in dealing with aging and dying parents, and Jenkins doesn't try to give us one; she simply takes us into the story of her fascinating characters, and the integrity with which she handles it makes it ring true throughout."

Updates, 1/23: Mike D'Angelo at ScreenGrab: "Linney and Hoffman are typically excellent, and The Savages has plenty of keenly observed moments, but it's also the kind of film in which someone says 'He won't marry me, but he cries when I make him eggs,' and two scenes later, sure enough, there he is choking back tears at the breakfast table. All you need to do is take another look at You Can Count on Me to see how much more potent sibling melodrama can be."

Online viewing tip. Fox Searchlight's Stephanie Allen talks with Jenkins.

Updates, 1/26: Craig Phillips takes extensive notes on a panel featuring Jenkins, Gregg Araki, David Gordon Green and Hal Hartley.

Carina Chocano tells the film's back story in the Los Angeles Times.

Coverage of the coverage: The Park City Index.

Posted by dwhudson at January 20, 2007 2:05 PM