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VENICE 2022 Competition

Review: The Son

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- VENICE 2022: Florian Zeller’s sophomore feature is an uncompromising statement on depression, generational trauma and parents’ responsibilities to their children

Review: The Son
Zen McGrath, Laura Dern and Hugh Jackman in The Son

How do you deal with someone you love acting in ways you cannot understand? Florian Zeller explored that question in The Father [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Florian Zeller
film profile
]
, centring on a man living with dementia. Likewise based on one of his plays, the Venice competition entry The Son [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
isn’t an exploration of any kind — it is a forceful, unambiguous statement.

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The film opens on a picture of domestic bliss: a mother, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), is humming a tune to her baby, while the father, Peter (Hugh Jackman), looks on. This harmony is, however, quickly shattered when Kate (Laura Dern), Peter’s ex-wife, knocks on their door and tells Peter she is worried about their teenage son, Nicholas (Zen McGrath). Thus the scene is set for a film that, unlike The Father, progresses not just in chronological order, but discursively. Peter tries to fix his child’s unhappiness one step at a time, surfing through this crisis armed with logic, reason and strength. But all of his attempts to help fail. The true discursive drive of the film isn’t his pragmatic method for “fixing” his son, but rather his complete inability to do so: without him noticing, his every move makes his son feel worse.

It almost feels like Zeller has ticked off all of the examples of what not to say or do to a struggling loved one listed in a “helping someone with depression” pamphlet — from reminding them that they are failing school, to telling them that when they cut themselves, they are also hurting you. If his neatly constructed, didactic film avoids coming across as an after-school special, that is because it isn’t simply about a father mishandling his child’s mental-health problems. By focusing on Peter, the film in fact boldly — and perhaps controversially — sets out to reveal the very tangible roots of Nicholas’ depression. 

Those origins might be more immediately obvious to viewers in the know, but Zeller only progressively reveals them, starting from the very first words uttered by Jackman: Peter greets the visibly distressed Kate with reproaches, his callousness especially shocking after the tender opening scene. Soon, however, this moment of cruelty is revealed to be part of a behavioural pattern, Peter emerging as a man with little patience for any problems outside of the office. As fathers go, he may initially seem better than many of them, always approaching life’s problems with optimism and never raising his voice. But when Peter adopts a conciliatory tone, he also minimises others’ worries; he talks and behaves like a politician, and sure enough, he is on track to become one.

These character traits may not seem all that dangerous. After all, others appear to be handling Peter’s denial and desire for control well. But that, too, is an illusion. When Peter casually talks to Kate about his new wife and baby, she tears up, more hurt by their divorce than he'd ever realised. “I didn’t mean to upset you,” he says; “I know,” she replies, smiling, though her words sound more resigned than forgiving. 

The theory that Nicholas might simply be struggling with his parents’ separation suddenly appears less clichéd: more than a split, to Nicholas and Kate, Peter’s decision to leave was a bewildering break with reality. That Kate and Peter now present themselves as amicable exes is just another one of Peter’s convenient illusions in his well-managed pick-and-choose existence. “I have the right to reinvent my life!” he tells his son. 

Forceful denial and compromise — is this what adulthood has in store for Nicholas? At the office, as Peter’s mind drifts towards his son, the superficiality of his life comes into focus and he, too, begins to look like a scared little boy. When he pays a rare visit to his father (Anthony Hopkins), a man even more callous than he is, we understand that he once was just as lost as Nicholas. He might still be. 

Zeller plays with our expectations by revealing his characters to be more self-aware than we had initially assumed: even Peter, who knows that he talks to his son with the same domineering attitude as his father’s. He simply doesn’t know better, and neither does his child. “I can’t deal with living, and it’s your fault!” Nicholas tells him. As the young man gets worse and his father persists on the same tack, we may start imagining all of the things that Peter could do, but doesn’t: tell his son that school tests don’t matter; take time off work to stay by his side; say that he loves him no matter what.

The Son is a UK production staged by See-Saw Films and Film4. Its international sales are overseen by Cross City Films and Embankment Films.

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Photogallery 07/09/2022: Venice 2022 - The Son

39 pictures available. Swipe left or right to see them all.

Florian Zeller, Hugh Jackman, Vanessa Kirby, Laura Dern, Zen McGrath, Deborra-Lee Furness, Beau Bridges, Walton Goggins, Noah Jupe, Bill Pohlad, Zooey Deschanel, Casey Affleck
© 2022 Fabrizio de Gennaro for Cineuropa - fadege.it, @fadege.it

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