"Life During Wartime," writer-director Todd Solondz's fascinating new movie, opens today and expands the James Thurber-E. B. White fables about the Everlasting War Between the Sexes to the War Between, Among, About and Throughout the Sexes. In some respects, it is a loose sequel to his 1998 film, "Happiness," but it certainly works as a character-driven story of its own. Part comedy, part tragedy, part history, part satire, part deeply questioning, it leaves one mulling over a brilliant curtain line.
The cast of solid performers is led by Joy (Shirley Henderson, who was Moaning Myrtle in the Harry Potter movies), a mousy young woman who seems antithetical to her name, and her two elder sisters, Helen (Ally Sheedy) and Trish (Allison Janney, who seems to be in everything this year).
Helen has left the family behind to become a successful Hollywood screenwriter. Trish, whose former husband is a jailed pedophile, moved from New Jersey to a Florida that is painfully bright. Her older son, Billy (Chris Marquette) is in college; the younger, Timmy (Dylan Riley Snyder, his face holding a Guinness-sized crop of freckles), is preparing for his Bar Mitzvah; and the daughter, Chloe (Emma Hinz), takes karaoke lessons and shows her skill to visitors. Joy was married to a man with sexual problems, but she's so lost she will never find her way home, no matter how many crumbs she leaves along the way.
There are men, too, with problems that make the women appear to epitomize normalcy. Several, like Paul Reubens and Michael Kenneth Williams, appear as ghosts. Michael Lerner is Harvey, who is courting Trish. He's a Jewish Republican who supports Bush and McCain because they support Israel, and has a son (Rich Pecci) who redefines the word "dork". Ciarin Hinds, as Trish's former husband, is released on parole and wanders into a one-night stand with Charlotte Rampling, a perfect example of a cougar.
Solondz has created a large number of unhappy people who are familiar to all of us. Only occasionally do they slide into caricature. Sometimes they are very funny as they seek some sort of happiness, but it breaks when they touch it.
Timmy, caught in that oh-so-painful area between childhood and adulthood (or is it adultery?), tries to get some answers, but neither Janney nor Lerner are able to provide ones that they can understand, so there is no way that a 12-year-old boy can, which leaves him saying to Lerner, "I don't care about freedom and democracy. I just want my father."
Love During Wartime opens today at the Tivoli
–Joe