Remove from this little family drama the gratuitous girl-on-girl sex, the guy-on-girl sex, and the ridiculously unnecessary and explicit images from a guy-on-guy gay porn film that no amount of hypnotism or bleach could ever erase from my mind, and what you have here is essentially a Lifetime Movie Channel melodrama with above average performances, especially from Annette Bening. The film is pleasant enough but nothing here feels like cinema. You need something smarter than nudity and edgier than profanity to elevate a production into something bigger than a rote movie of the week.
Nic (Bening) and Jules (Julianne Moore) are a lesbian couple in a long-term, loving and committed relationship that from the outside looks perfectly idyllic. The two women live in a nice home in a nice Los Angeles neighborhood and are raising two teenagers of their own. The kids, college-bound Joni and the younger and the somewhat lost Laser, are products of a sperm donor but both kids love their moms and seem as well-adjusted as Wally and Theodore Cleaver.
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Beneath the surface, however, cracks are forming in the family’s foundation. Nic is the breadwinner, a physician who drinks too much and likes control over her environment and all those who inhabit it. Jules might be in her forties but she’s still looking for her place in the world, which is a nice way of saying she has trouble holding down a job. These pressures have taken the steam out of the couple’s sex life and undermined their emotional intimacy, and the person who will introduce the element that splits these cracks wide open is Laser. Now that they’re older, both kids are naturally curious as to who their real father is. Especially Laser, who’s at an age where he’s missing and could use an actual father figure.
Because she’s eighteen, Joni is able to get the information on their donor daddy, Paul (Mark Ruffalo), the shaggy, hippy dippy owner of a organic food restaurant who’s something of a lothario (pretty much the same performance he gave in the vastly superior “You Can Count on Me“). With his easygoing manner, Paul is a nice relief from the uptight Nic and the neurotic Jules, so the kids understandably take a shine to him and turn a blind eye to his self-centeredness. Though obviously jealous, Nic and Jules do their best to encourage the burgeoning relationship and to make Paul a part of their family. This ends up taking an ugly turn when a sexually frustrated Jules, who’s tired of feeling inferior to the much more successful and centered Nic, engages in heated sexual affair with Paul.
The dreaded Liberal Tell ruins what could’ve been the most suspenseful and interesting part of this story. But because of the rampant political correctness that stifles creativity in Hollywood, because we know the lockstep way this industry thinks, there’s never any doubt that Jules and Paul will break up. They must. A gay person finding real happiness in a straight relationship is not an idea the Thought Police will even allow us to consider these days. So with the outcome inevitable, you’re left to sit through all the soap opera machinations that fill up the time before you arrive at the only conclusion the one-note politics of present-day Hollywood will allow.
What really kills the story, though, are the TV trappings. Even the cinematography fails here. There are actual television shows that don’t look as televisiony as this film. Furthermore, too many of the jokes not only fall flat, but fall flat in that over-the-top, trying-too-hard sit-comish way. Notably, the one element that rises above all of this is Annette Bening. A formidable actress with real talent, she delivers some terrific moments, including a memorably heartbreaking one.
She deserved a better movie and so did we.
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