The Kids Are All Right

Ultimately, this might not even rise to the level of a tempest in a teapot: Lesbian and gay viewers, along with everybody else who actually sees “The Kids Are All Right,” are likely to find it a sympathetic, honest and frequently hilarious film about the challenges of marriage, parenting and contemporary family life, with one highly topical twist. But if some queer-radical types object to the film on political or ideological grounds, there’s a sense in which they’re right to do so. This movie definitely isn’t aimed at them.

In other interviews, Cholodenko has joked that she’s more interested in drawing in straight male viewers than in placating every possible segment of lesbian opinion. That makes the film sound a lot more calculated and Hollywoodish than it is, but the point she’s making is that “The Kids Are All Right” has a dramatic agenda but no political agenda. It’s not attached to a set of talking points about gay marriage and sexual identity, it’s not advocating some revolutionary artistic or social paradigm and it’s not a seminar in LGBT self-esteem.

Jules and Nic (Bening’s workaholic doctor character) and their teenage kids and the Peter Pan man-boy who threatens to come between them (a scene-stealing Mark Ruffalo) are flawed, selfish, fascinating characters you’ll sometimes like and sometimes hate. This is one of the most compelling and rewarding portraits of a middle-class American marriage in cinema history, as well as one of the funniest. The fact that the people in this particular marriage are both women is important to the story, of course. But perhaps, Cholodenko suggests, it isn’t all that important to the universe.

When I asked her how the story would be different if it were about a straight marriage, she replied: “I think in all the really important ways, it wouldn’t be different. It’s a portrait of a marriage, a portrait of a family, you know? It’s about — not to blow the plot — how an affair rocks a family. When you do something like that when you’re married and you have kids, you’re not just doing it for yourself. You’re doing it at the expense of other people who are depending on a certain kind of stability.”

If anything, Cholodenko continued, her film explores questions of marital fidelity and adultery in a mode that family-values conservatives could almost embrace. If it weren’t, that is, for the hot, hilarious and/or illicit sex scenes of various flavors — always a connoisseur of awkward sex, Cholodenko has outdone herself here — and the plot point involving what Jules and Nic’s teenage son refers to as “gay man-porn.” And if it weren’t for the fact that God apparently decreed, somewhere or other, that you can only get married if you have complementary plumbing, and not symmetrical plumbing.

In depicting a lesbian marriage that’s about as traditional as a marriage gets — right down to the drinking, the squabbling, the cheating and the profoundly embarrassing moments in front of the kids — Cholodenko has arguably made a more revolutionary and transgressive film than you’d see in a dozen queer-cinema festivals in lower Manhattan or the Castro District. In making a highly personal film that’s deliberately crafted to reach a wide popular audience, Cholodenko may finally bust out of the indie niche that has made her career so far almost a trade secret. (Her two excellent earlier films, “Laurel Canyon” and “High Art,” were limited to big-city art-house venues.)

This lesbian-mom filmmaker (Cholodenko and her partner, one-time pop musician Wendy Melvoin, have a young son) has made the gay-marriage comedy that America needs right now. Thankfully, she made it before the farcical Hollywood version that you just know is somewhere in the pipeline. With the release of “The Kids Are All Right,” she’s also launched this year’s Oscar sweepstakes a few months early. (Foolish as it is to predict these things, I’d be shocked if this didn’t garner at least a few nominations.) Here’s an excerpt from my Sundance review: 

Nic (Bening) is a doctor, intensely driven and controlling, who’s sliding into that polite, socially acceptable, four-glasses-of-red-wine version of alcoholism. Jules (Moore) has a succession of failed careers and businesses behind her, and now Nic’s bankrolling another one, an eco-conscious landscape design business. They’ve slightly and subtly drifted apart — they just don’t put on that secret DVD of gay male porn that much anymore! They probably don’t need a direct challenge to their family stability — and to Jules’ sexuality — but here it comes, in the person of roguish, motorcycle-riding Paul (Mark Ruffalo), who just happens to be the biological father of Nic and Jules’ teenage kids.

Their eldest, Joni (Mia Wasikowska) — yes, she’s named after that Joni — has just turned 18 and made a call to the sperm bank that yielded half her genetic code. Her younger brother, Laser (Josh Hutcherson), is actually the one who wants to meet Paul, but it’s the ultra-bright, inquisitive Joni who forms a connection with him, and ends up hanging out at his organic mini-farm and restaurant, and meeting his ultra-cool African-American business partner (and occasional lover). Nic and Jules furiously resist the intruder at first — “We’re not doing a time-share on our kids during Joni’s last summer at home,” Nic spits — but despite their efforts Paul becomes a tentative, adjunct member of the family.

Once Jules agrees to take on Paul’s weedy, overgrown backyard as her first landscaping gig — thrusting the two of them together for long days of Los Angeles summer sunshine — the comic logic of the situation begins to move in an obvious direction. Beneath the easygoing surface Paul feels rootless and is drawn to Jules both physically and emotionally. She’s flattered, and frankly horny, and as she says, “I keep seeing the expressions of my kids in your face.” But there’s nothing forced or false about what develops between Paul and Jules, and Cholodenko’s definitely not interested in that story line about a hot lesbian who goes straight after a healthy dose of rogering.

I’d describe Cholodenko as an old-fashioned dramatist (in the best possible sense) whose heart and imagination are big enough for all these people. Each of the five principal characters takes a turn at the center of the story; each of them makes ferocious mistakes and must struggle to overcome them. It would be easy for her to cast Paul as the story’s comic villain, the blithe, privileged, good-looking straight white guy who screws up the happy lesbian household. But Cholodenko draws out one of Ruffalo’s best performances, capturing Paul as a sweet, sad Peter Pan figure whose principal sin is a sudden longing for what he can’t have.

Nic and Jules were doing a fine job of screwing up their happy lesbian household before Paul’s arrival, of course, but “The Kids Are All Right” ranks with the most compelling portraits of an American marriage, regardless of sexuality, in film history. Even more remarkably, it’s an overwhelmingly affirmative warts-and-all portrait, not a Bergman-style descent into the pit of marital darkness. Watching two of our finest actresses playing unglamorous, flawed and complicated women is a rare privilege, and in virtually every moment and every breath of “The Kids Are All Right” we feel that Nic and Jules have created something that, damaged as it is, must be saved.

Cholodenko says she and Blumberg were well aware that building the plot around Jules’ affair with Paul, and thereby invoking the superstition that lesbians all secretly yearn for cock, might piss off some folks in her own constituency. It was central to her conception of the movie, not to mention her personal ideas about sexual identity and married life, so she went ahead and nailed herself in the coffin, as she jokes. “Look, I’m so glad this film will have a commercial life,” she told me. “I think it deserves it. But it’s still an auteur film. I’m not trying to please a studio. I’m just writing it from my heart. It wasn’t contrived. It wasn’t a conceit. It wasn’t somebody else’s fantasy.

“This seems true for me and for people I know. I see sexuality as much more fluid. I believe people can have sexual desire for people of the opposite sex and the same sex, but that emotionally they can be whatever, homosexual or heterosexual. There are people who see sexual identity as bound forever, and that there’s no continuum at all. I find that thinking, and the critique that comes from that, really dated.”

“The Kids Are All Right” opens July 9 in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with wider national release to follow.

That’s one side of the story. The other side is that 2010 looks in the rear-view mirror like a terrific year for moviemaking, at least if you’re using a Venn diagram that extends from high-middlebrow Hollywood fare like “King’s Speech” and “Social Network” out to the indie-film fringes. Attendance was down a tick for the biggest “tentpole” productions last year (revenues increased a little, almost entirely because of the larger ticket prices for 3-D releases), but there was a smorgasbord of interesting mid-budget and low-budget films aimed at a blue-state, metropolitan audience. This year’s Oscar nominees are light on huge, expensive spectacles (“Inception” and “Toy Story 3″) but rich with provocative and engaging pop entertainments, from the marriage melodrama of “The Kids Are All Right” to the cinematic showboating of “Black Swan” and “127 Hours” to the wrenching, hardscrabble Americana of “Winter’s Bone” and “Blue Valentine.”

The 2011 Oscar race so far offers further evidence of how far the Academy’s collective opinion has drifted away from that of the mass audience. Film critics have traditionally approached the Oscars as a bear-baiting ritual that allowed them to deride the stodgy tastes of Academy members (often visualized as a pack of cranky Jewish retirees in golf pants). But given how closely the two groups mirror each other these days, it’s time to retire that one.

Sure, “Inception” and “Toy Story 3″ were both nominated for best picture and are two of the year’s top box-office films. But both got significant love from critics — and furthermore, if you think either has a shot at the big prize, you simply haven’t been paying attention. Those made the list, arguably, to balance out the Academy’s evident preference for more indie-flavored fare like fellow best-picture nominees “The Kids Are All Right,” “Black Swan,” “127 Hours” and “Winter’s Bone.” As I note below, Ben Affleck’s “The Town,” a mainstream hit touted as an Oscar contender in some quarters, was pretty well ignored. “Secretariat,” a horsey nostalgia exercise that performed well in Middle America but did no business in cities, was perhaps envisioned by its studio as this year’s answer to “The Blind Side,” but garnered no major nominations.

It’s not as if “Social Network” or “King’s Speech” are art-house obscurities or anything; the first has grossed almost $100 million and the second is at $50 million and counting. That makes them look like “Gone With the Wind” compared to, say, “The Hurt Locker,” whose domestic returns of $12.6 million almost certainly made it the lowest-grossing Oscar winner in history, even if you adjust for inflation or process it through a time machine. But like almost every recent Oscar winner, they’re pictures that have played strongest with college-educated audiences on the coasts and in big cities, and have made relatively little impression in the multiplex heartland. They’re movies made by and for a certain class of people, a difficult concept to conjure with in a nation where we pretend social class does not exist. They’re Oscar movies — and the more that category seems to change, the more it stays the same.

Here are today’s major winners and losers, as I see them.

WINNERS

“The King’s Speech” — With 12 nominations, including best picture, best director for Tom Hooper and acting nominations for its three featured performers (Firth, Geoffrey Rush and Helena Bonham Carter), this appealing yarn about George VI, aka Bertie, and his Aussie speech therapist will now be seen as Oscar co-favorite. I’m not buying it, at least not yet. I foresee a split ticket, with “Social Network” winning best picture and best director, but “King’s Speech” potentially winning two or even all three of the acting awards.

“True Grit” — The surprise chick flick of the season — and if you think I’m cracking a joke, you haven’t seen it — piled up a bunch of nominations, but most likely won’t win in any major category. In the upside-down star-system logic of Hollywood, Jeff Bridges was nominated for best actor in what is clearly a supporting role, while youthful star Hailee Steinfeld, who’s probably on-screen for 80 percent of the film’s running time, won a supporting-actress nod.

“The Fighter” — Yes, Mark Wahlberg’s quiet starring role as small-town palooka Micky Ward was passed over, which is kind of too bad. But with a best-picture nomination and supporting nods for Christian Bale, Melissa Leo and Amy Adams — all of whom were fantastic — this richly enjoyable yarn of downscale ’90s America may get a second look from viewers who stayed away the first time around. Bale and Leo are seen by many as favorites, but the “King’s Speech” upsurge may swamp them.

“Winter’s Bone” — Debra Granik’s devastating crime saga set in the Ozarks came out early in the year and did modest business. But critics didn’t forget it, and neither did the Academy, which delivered a best-picture nomination, an acting nod for young star Jennifer Lawrence, and a supporting-actor nomination for the menacing John Hawkes.

“Gasland” — Oscar’s documentary category often tracks closely with rising social and political issues, and this relatively obscure work from activist filmmaker Josh Fox explores “hydrofracking,” a controversial and destructive method of natural-gas extraction that has rapidly become a hot environmental cause in the Northeast.

“Exit Through the Gift Shop” — Is the debut film from shadowy British artist Banksy a genuine documentary or an artfully constructed fraud? I’ve never thought it was an interesting question — since the movie is hilarious, and poses the same philosophical questions about art and commerce, either way — and in delivering an Oscar nomination, I guess the Academy agrees.

“Dogtooth” — This dark and disturbing allegory from Greek filmmaker Giorgios Lanthimos looked like the longest of long shots for foreign-Oscar consideration. But persistent critical adoration put it on the map, and here it is. (I’m not the biggest fan — but I’ll deal with the intriguing list of foreign-film nominees in due course.)

LOSERS

“The Social Network” — Don’t get me wrong; I still think this is the best-picture favorite, and that David Fincher will also go home with the best-director statuette. But it received fewer nominations than either “King’s Speech” or “True Grit.” Jesse Eisenberg won’t win, and neither Andrew Garfield nor Justin Timberlake were nominated for their outstanding supporting performances.

“Inception”–  Despite a world-conquering box-office take of $823 million and the adulation of countless fans, Christopher Nolan again finds himself a bit player in the Oscar race. “Inception’s” nods for best picture and original screenplay are basically affirmative action for commercial cinema. I don’t think it will win in either category, and Nolan himself was passed over in the directing category. Various commentators are acting like a surprise — at this point, it’s more like a ritual.

“Blue Valentine” — Maybe that NC-17 controversy really did hurt. Michelle Williams was nominated for best actress, but costar Ryan Gosling was passed over, and Derek Cianfrance’s gritty marriage drama, despite all the critical raves, was otherwise ignored.

“127 Hours” — Sure, both Danny Boyle’s film and star James Franco were nominated. But a muddled critical reception, mediocre box office and the general sense that Franco is an overexposed hipster avatar have rendered this brutal, effects-driven freakout an Oscar-race afterthought.

“The Town” — Ben Affleck’s Boston bank-heist thriller was well reviewed early in the fall, but all along it was just a dumbass pop film that was slightly better crafted than others of its ilk. Jeremy Renner’s supporting-actor nomination is richly deserved, but Oscar otherwise gave the cold shoulder to this forgettable vanity project.

“The Tillman Story” — Amir Bar-Lev’s fascinating documentary about Army Ranger Pat Tillman, the former football star killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan — an idiosyncratic individual from an amazing American family — seemed like an obvious contender. I guess Tim Hetherington and Sebastian Junger’s “Restrepo,” a powerful you-are-there doc, filled Oscar’s war-movie quota.

While the indie-centric, New York-based Gothams don’t get widely noticed or discussed outside movie-biz circles, they provide a valuable early snapshot of which smaller films have been noticed by critics and industry types. Over the past few years, they’ve become a pretty good predictor of Oscar nominations. With the Academy sticking to 10 best-picture nominees this year, at least four of the Gothams’ five best-feature nominees are solid Oscar contenders, the fifth being Matt Reeves’ Euro-vampire remake “Let Me In,” which might be too small, too strange and too dark for Academy voters. (Anybody who reads the Gotham press release to the end will notice that I was on the nominating committee, so you’re welcome to read all this as sinister log-rolling if you like.)

In fact, this year’s Oscar race looks remarkably clear-cut, considering there are still 10 weeks left in 2010 and that the huge and socially irrelevant spectacle in the Kodak Theatre is more than four months away. Those are famous last words, of course, so let me allow some wiggle room and guess that I can accurately predict at least 8 of the eventual 10 best-picture nominees. Here are the morning-line favorites, in alphabetical order, followed by an assortment of outsiders and unknowns.

127 Hours Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle (“Slumdog Millionaire”) and ultra-hot hipster actor-writer-deep thinker James Franco in a stylish survival odyssey about a happy-go-lucky outdoors-type dude who has to cut his own fucking hand off! It’s almost an overdose of Oscar-readiness, and how audiences will respond to this gruesome and psychedelic yarn remains to be seen. But barring a commercial disaster, multiple nominations will ensue. (Opens Nov. 5.)

Black Swan Darren Aronofsky’s dazzling ballet thriller, with Natalie Portman as a young dancer haunted by the notoriously difficult starring role in “Swan Lake,” was the smash hit of last month’s Venice and Toronto festivals and ought to set fall audiences buzzing. Unless it crashes and burns at the box office, nominations for the film, Aronofsky and Portman are likely, with supporting nods for Vincent Cassel and Mila Kunis also possible. (Opens in early December.)

Blue Valentine The Weinstein Co. and writer-director Derek Cianfrance are currently mulling how hard to fight the MPAA’s ridiculous NC-17 rating for this intense working-class marriage drama with Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. (The rating could affect its Oscar chances, since most mainstream theater chains won’t show an NC-17 picture.) Paying viewers won’t see the movie until the end of the year, but a marketing campaign that began at Sundance and continued at Cannes has positioned “Blue Valentine” as a high-integrity, high-prestige film no matter how poorly it performs financially. (Opens in late December.)

Hereafter Clint Eastwood’s three-stranded, “Crash”-like exploration of mortality and the Great Beyond has gotten mixed reviews in its big-city opening, and may have trouble garnering audiences in an overcrowded season. Despite the weird subject matter, it’s a handsomer, cooler, altogether more Clint-like product than “Invictus,” and Eastwood movies should always be considered likely Oscar nominees until proved otherwise.

Inception Although knocked off its perch as critical fave-rave of the year (and presumptive Oscar favorite) by “The Social Network,” Christopher Nolan’s nested-dream thriller remains a likely best-picture nominee, if not all that likely a winner. It’s a major-studio film that was exceptionally well reviewed and made a ton of money (a domestic gross approaching $300 million), and it was directed by the guy who didn’t get nominated for “The Dark Knight” — the very phenomenon that led the Academy to double the number of best-picture nominees in the first place. Me, personally? I feel like I’ve forgotten about “Inception” and totally don’t care. But whenever you’re in doubt about any Oscar-related situation or phenomenon, go with the Mafia-like conspiracy theory, and there’s a debt to be paid here.

The Kids Are All Right Lisa Cholodenko’s lesbian-marriage comedy got universally glowing reviews and strong indie-level box office results ($20 million-plus), and tackled a hot-button social issue in disarming fashion. I’m not sure it’s going to win anything, but nominations for stars Annette Bening and Julianne Moore, co-star Mark Ruffalo (lending new weight to the comic concept of “straight man”), Cholodenko and the movie are all likely.

The King’s Speech This is the only movie on this list of probables I haven’t seen — no, let’s be honest. It’s the one I have actively avoided, because it’s a movie about King George VI and how he overcame his speech disability, and I had a hard time believing that it could possibly be anything except honorable Anglophile treacle. But at this point I’ve had enough trustworthy people tell me, “No, you don’t understand. Just go see it.” Reportedly full of Oscar-worthy performances all around, starting with Colin Firth’s starring role, but also including Guy Pearce (as the abdicating Edward VIII), Michael Gambon (as the dying George V), Helena Bonham Carter (as the young Princess Elizabeth) and Timothy Spall (as Winston Churchill). (Opens in late November.)

The Social Network Perhaps you’ve heard of this; I believe it’s about some young fellow who invents a computer, or some such thing. We’ve gone through a full iteration of pro-”Social Network” hype and anti-”Social Network” backlash and back again, and despite disappointing box-office returns (the film has yet to make back its reported $50 million budget, although it certainly will), the Mark Zuckerberg saga remains the leading Oscar contender, with nominations for the film, Aaron Sorkin’s script, David Fincher’s direction and Jesse Eisenberg’s starring role a foregone conclusion. Can this film survive the inflated comparisons to “Citizen Kane” and win a bunch of statuettes? A whole bunch of highly-paid P.R. consultants are mulling that question right now, and if I were that good at reading tea leaves, I guess I’d be one of them.

Toy Story 3 Yes, I think this will be the year a Pixar movie finally makes the best-picture list, but given the Academy’s particular blend of middlebrow obtuseness, there’s no telling. “Toy Story 3″ got wonderful reviews, made more money than any animated feature in history and entertained huge crowds all summer long. (I enjoyed it, but don’t see the near-masterpiece proclaimed by its most ardent defenders.) So what’s not to like? Oscar voters don’t do “cartoons,” it’s as simple as that. Even if TS3 gets nominated, director Lee Unkrich and the Pixar crew will have to make do with the best animated feature award, and go home halfway contented.

Winter’s Bone In another year, director Debra Granik’s devastating female-centric Ozark crime drama would be the little indie feature that gets one semi-surprising nomination (e.g., Melissa Leo for “Frozen River”), delighting everyone involved. But here again the expanded best-picture field comes into play. While 20-year-old Jennifer Lawrence is widely seen as a best-actress contender for her starring role as Granik’s teen heroine, the movie itself is a highly plausible nominee, with ultra-sinister co-star John Hawkes in the running for a supporting-actor nod.

UNKNOWNS, BOTH KNOWN AND OTHERWISE

Fair Game I don’t see Doug Liman’s worthy but plodding drama about the Valerie Plame affair as a strong best-picture nominee — partly because the events in question seem to have happened a lifetime ago — but good reviews or a surprising box-office turnout could change that. Naomi Watts (as Plame) and Sean Penn (as her husband, former diplomat Joseph Wilson) are both excellent, and surely will be considered for major acting awards. (Opens Nov. 5.)

Inside Job Charles Ferguson’s blow-the-roof-off exposé of the financial criminality that led to the 2008 banking collapse is clearly the frontrunner in Oscar’s documentary category. But it’s an angry, elegant, well-made movie that will appeal to Hollywood’s conscience, and I won’t be shocked if it sneaks could into the best-picture race as well. (Documentaries are rarely nominated, but there’s no rule against it.)

Made in Dagenham This red-hot British film starring Sally Hawkins and Bob Hoskins is coming up fast on the outside, with multiple nominations possible. It tackles not one but two important social issues — labor unrest and sexual discrimination — and does so with swingin’ period costumes and a working-class Anglo accent. Director Nigel Cole and writer Billy Ivory dramatize the legendary 1968 strike at a Ford plant outside London, where female workers organized and walked off the job. I haven’t seen “Made in Dagenham” yet, but it’s gotten a rousing response from festival audiences, and could attract female viewers in droves. (Opens in mid-November.)

The Town I didn’t much care for Ben Affleck’s exercise in Bah-ston he-man self-love, and “The Town’s” underwhelming results at the box office may have removed it from best-picture contention. Jeremy Renner’s hothead supporting character nearly stole the movie out from under Affleck and may have earned Renner a (completely deserved) nomination.

True Grit Any Coen brothers movie carries the potential of being a serious and dark-hearted Oscar contender (“No Country for Old Men,” “A Serious Man”) or of being a minor, jokey-dark farce (“Burn After Reading,” “The Ladykillers”). Which direction will they go with this adaptation of Charles Portis’ western novel (which also produced the 1969 John Wayne hit)? A dynamite cast headed by Matt Damon, Josh Brolin and Jeff Bridges (in the Wayne role as Marshal Cogburn) suggests seriousness, while the level of secrecy surrounding the film — which hasn’t played festivals or screened for the press — suggests nothing in particular, except that the poker-faced brothers love to keep us guessing. (Opens in late December.)

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps In general, nah. Oliver Stone’s long-awaited sequel failed to connect with either critics or audiences, and is a distant second to Ferguson’s “Inside Job” when it comes to illustrating the financial collapse. But given recent news about Michael Douglas’ cancer diagnosis, expect a supporting-actor Oscar nomination (at least) for his Gordon Gekko swan song.