"The Savages", writer-director Tamara Jenkins' long-awaited follow-up to 1998's comic gem "Slums of Beverly Hills", is the small, sluggish story of a brother and sister brought together to care for their aging father. As the siblings (whose last name is Savage), Ms. Jenkins scores the casting coup of Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney - two of our finest most naturalistic actors. The two performers excel in what is otherwise a slight film about life, death and extreme self-obsession.
Long-time character actor Philip Bosco plays Lenny Savage (I'm guessing Alan Arkin wasn't available), the patriarch of the wildly estranged Savage family. Lenny lives in Arizona with his girlfriend who quickly passes away when the movie begins. For reasons which are never made clear, Lenny has no connection with his children, who live on the east coast (he in Buffalo, she in New York). A few lines of dialogue explain that their mother is "out of the picture". Left to their own devices, both children have grown into the kind of repressed, emotionally-stunted sour-pusses made for small films like this one.
Mr. Hoffman's Jon is a professor and Brechtian scholar who recently ended a relationship with his Polish girlfriend rather than marry her because "who's ready for that". Meanwhile, Ms. Linney's Wendy has a penchant for little white lies and is wound so tightly it looks like she may freak out at any moment. Wendy is also trapped in a relationship which amounts to little more than unsatisfying "booty calls" with a slimy married man. Naturally, these two are ill-equipped to handle the task of caring for Lenny. Jon is all business, finding a nursing home almost immediately, but he's so emotionally distant that Wendy is left floundering, attempting to spruce up the place with lava lamps and fluffy pillows. The film is largely a collection of well-acted (extremely well-acted) moments - mostly scenes of bickering between brother and sister, in between feelings of guilt about their relationship with Lenny.
I respect that Ms. Jenkins attempts to make no grand statements about the state of healthcare in this country, nor do her characters go through any outwardly-obvious epiphanies. Where Ms. Jenkins excels is in the small moments - a Real Estate agent won't open the door for Wendy, but happily closes it. "We came straight from the airport", Wendy says, holding a Starbucks cup. There is a small, touching story here about aging and family which wouldn't sustain an entire film without its two powerhouse lead actors. The scenes between Ms. Linney and Mr. Hoffman alone nearly make the film worth recommending. Nearly.
