The Family Fang * * *

The Family Fang is on very limited release (like, one cinema) which is surprising considering it’s casting - Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken, Jason Bateman - but unsurprising considering the uncompromising way it is directed.  I later learnt it was made two years ago and has been sitting in the can for the last year.  Looks like not too many distributors have been keen to get their hands on this one.

Kid A and Kid B get a C from me

Its directed by actor Jason Bateman in his directorial debut and there is a sense of uncertainty (or over-confidence?) in his style.  Either way, I felt there was an emotional bereftness in many of the scenes - which is not what you expect from a family drama.

But then, The Family Fang are no ordinary family.

I found the idea more exciting than the actual telling of the story: Caleb Fang (Christopher Walken) and his wife Camille are “Performance Artists”.  As they raised their children through the seventies and eighties they had no hesitation in involving them in their street art performances.  (Personally, most of their “performances”  struck me as silly pranks rather than art).

The children are now grown up and haven't done too bad but they’ve got issues.  Always referred to as child A and child B by their parents, they are Annie and Baxter (Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman). Now in their forties Annie is an actress who seems to constantly stumble into notoriety, Baxter is a struggling writer, having to do magazine articles to get along.  

After Baxter has an accident, the family rush to his side and a reunion takes place in the family home.  But it doesn’t last long. Mum and Dad soon go missing....

Their car has been abandoned on a country road with blood on the dashboard.  The cops fear it is abduction and possibly murder, Annie and Baxter figure it is just another  “performance art” piece from their parents,  especially when clues pop-up that allow them to join the dots.

There is a certain irony to the story: if their parents are dead they will be freed from the influence of their notoriety and out of their shadows. Yet they feel compelled to look for the very people they need to be free of. Indeed, could their death be a considered a gift from the parents to their children?.

Like that other recent quirky family drama Captain Fantastic The Family Fang offers up a family whose extreme difference tends to rob you of empathy.