The Savages film review

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THE SAVAGES

A film about looking after a terminally ill parent may not sound like the most appetising prospect, but Tamara Jenkins' new offering is a delight, and one of the year's best. It's already been nominated for two Oscars (for Jenkins' script and for Laura Linney's performance), and rightly so.

What's most surprising about this potentially morbid subject matter is just how funny it is. Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman play Wendy and Jon Savage, a brother and a sister who lead separate and very much self-involved lives. Jon is a fairly successful Brechtian scholar with a house full of books and a beat up car, while Wendy is a failed writer of pretentious plays.

Their self-centred lives - he is just interested in getting more funding and has a desultory relationship with a Polish professor, while she watches life pass her by in a tiny New York apartment - are rudely interrupted by news from Florida that their estranged father (an excellent Philip Bosco) is no longer able to take care of himself and is being booted out of his retirement village. The reality is that the grown-up kids now have to look after their incontinent and occasionally delirious parent.

Jenkins' script delivers a succession of piercing and often hilarious observations and she makes the most of her exceptional cast. Hoffman once again proves why he is one of the most engaging American actors working today, and Linney breaks out of her usual ice maiden persona to deliver her most complex and satisfying performance to date. Wendy may not be likeable, but she's hugely entertaining.

As is the film as a whole. It takes a dark subject - a harsh reality for most of us - and treats it with a very honest voice. If there are ten films as good as this released in 2008, it will be a very good year indeed.

Paul Hurley