FILM REVIEW: HOME FOR THE HOLIDAYS
The father that obsesses over the past, using homemade films flickering in the basement to relive a past that perhaps would be better suited to his imagination, with its ability to pretend that at least when his were young everything was perfect; everyone got along.
The mother, in denial of her old age. The secretive brother, the obsessive-compulsive sister and her "I'm-a-victim" husband. The lonely, longing Aunt.
And then there's Claudia. The normal one, right?
Jodie Foster's Home for the Holidays works because there is no "normal" one, but no one the opposite either. They are real people, flawed because they're in the movies, where no one is too realistic, but still more so than many. The temptation in making a film like this, especially a comedy, is to assemble a group of oddball actors to play a group of off-the-wall characters, demonstrating the "wackiness" that ensues when a family gets together for Thanksgiving.
But while, admittedly, the family Foster creates is not QUITE what you'll find behind the front door of many homes on your street most holidays, it's closer than you normally expect to find from Hollywood. Mostly plotless, the film jumps from scene-to-scene running the gamut of holiday joy and agony.
Claudia (Holly Hunter) is an art restorer from Chicago, home for Thanksgiving with the folks. She eyes kindred spirits: in the airport, a line of adults talking on the payphones with their parents; in a car next to her, a man slumped in the back seat, dreading the weekend back home. Just like her, all relegated back to hood. This after she loses her jacket and is forced into one of her mother's atrocious coats. This after earlier in the day she was fired and her teenage daughter tells her she's going to use the Thanksgiving holiday to lose her virginity.
At this point the film is on its way to Contrived City, but once we arrive at Claudia's parents' (Anne Bancroft, Charles Durning) home the movie slows down and allows the triviality of the holidays to shine through. Yes, her brother Tommy (Robert Downey, Jr.) and his friend Leo Fish (Dylan McDermott) show up in the middle of the night, and during the Thanksgiving dinner a turkey ends up on a lap, but for the most part the film settles into realism, looking not for laughable hijinks as much as a reserved observation of, or even homage to, family interaction.
One could expect argument after argument, but save sister Joanne (Cynthia Stevenson) and husband Walter (Steve Gutenberg), uptight as can be, everyone pretty much gets along fine. There is joy in being home, and the interaction between the family members shows it. This is a film celebrating the gathering of family, not bemoaning or even neutrally portraying it. If nothing, the film could serve to crucify it more.
A better writer could have produced wittier dialogue and a film perhaps more introspective, but WD Richter's script (from a short story by Chris Radant) still forgoes large, built-up incidents surely not taken from reality for slices of everyone's holiday experiences. But it's the atmosphere that makes the film: Foster has made it FEEL like Thanksgiving. Hustle-and-bustle slowing down as family filters in (past a morning parade, no less) and finally a turkey give the movie a feeling of the holidays most Christmas films would kill for.
The cast is the key here: this is one of Holly Hunter's more underrated roles, as with limited history or insightful dialogue to use she manages to create a character we can relate to not only because of horrors and joys she experiences at home but what we don't know about her, as well. She is everyman. Cynthia Stevenson was born for this part: every role of hers carries a bit of standoffishness; here she's allowed to let it take over her role. Even her homophobia towards her brother seems almost forgivable given her amazing selfishness; she's more offended by it because she's afraid what others will think of her.
Bancroft and Durning shine as the parents, Downey provides good comic relief as her brother, and Dylan McDermott turns in what might be his best performance, even if it involves little effort. Tough to watch sometimes on "The Practice," here McDermott may do the best job in the film, sitting back and watching this family as no one quite knows what to think about him, especially Claudia. If you joined the film in progress, five minutes in with no knowledge of the characters' relationships, Leo would stand out as the one not in the family, and as maybe the most interesting character if you could ever find out anything about him. A lot of that comes from McDermott's charm, something he doesn't always get to show.
Towards the end of the film, Joanne tells Claudia, "If I just met you on the street, if you gave me your number, I'd throw it away." That's an anomaly. If you asked Claudia at the film's outset if she wanted to go home, it would have taken her less than a second to respond "no." But deep down she'd know she was lying. These people don't need each other as much as they want each other, and you can even include Joanne. They just don't realize it on the surface.