The Talent Given Us

Directed by Andrew Wagner

All filmmakers model characters on their own family (the ones who claim they don't are lying). But writer-director Andrew Wagner went a step further and cast his own relatives as versions of themselves in The Talent Given Us, a ragged-edged road movie in which married couple Judy and Allen Wagner (played by the director's parents) tire of their routine in New York City and impulsively drive to Los Angeles to visit their struggling screenwriter son Andrew (the director), bringing Andrew's sisters, Maggie and Emily (the director's real sisters) along for the ride.

Except for Andrew, a rueful presence who stays off-screen for much of the movie, the Wagners are depicted as earthy people who have no internal censors and recognize no distinction between public and private space. They treat every setting, from apartments to cars to restaurants to city streets, as a makeshift talk show set in which they can publicly psychoanalyze one another and call each other out (the first often seems a pretext for the second). Judy complains that Allen, a cantankerous stroke survivor, doesn't sleep with her anymore, and criticizes her two daughters to their faces about every little thing that crosses her mind; Maggie and Emily chastise Judy for being a cold, selfish, hurtful mother; Allen and Judy also trade accusations of adultery. These confrontations are presented as perfectly normal Wagner-to-Wagner conversations that happen to be caught on camera.

The most intriguing thing about The Talent Given Us is its concept. Like John Cassavetes by way of Iranian cinema, it aims to obliterate the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, documentary and drama. Except for Allen, a former stockbroker, everyone in the Wagner family is an artist. Judy was once a dancer and literary magazine editor; Maggie has numerous acting credits, including Henry Jaglom's Going Shopping, while Emily had a recurring role on ER and has also appeared on Jack and Jill and Judging Amy. Yet the fact that every "actor" is essentially playing him or herself makes them seem more like regular people than movie actors, and gives each scene an edge it wouldn't otherwise have. Augmented by up-close and often jittery handheld camerawork, the director's gambit lends credibility to contrived moments and sometimes makes you feel as if you shouldn't be watching any of this stuff because it's private. (It might also make critics feel as if they should be as nice to the movie as possible, because to knock any individual character or actor is to knock the artist's mother, father or sisters.) The early scenes or Allen and Judy in New York City are especially effective-as intense and funny as home video footage of one's own parents going about their daily routine, sweating the small stuff and grousing at each other.

But once the Wagners get on the road, a strange thing happens: The Talent Given Us becomes a bit like every other low-budget road movie you've ever seen. The clichés of fiction (or more accurately, the clichés of actor-driven indie cinema) contaminate the carefully constructed facade of "reality." Hard truths are told in cheap motel rooms; irritated travelers snap at each other while driving on interstates; apologies are tendered, treaties brokered; light, quirky music tells us whether a scene is wacky or sweet. Much is made of Judy's stated intention to divorce Allen and start a new life, but you don't believe it for a second; this plot device just seems like the filmmaker's way of arbitrarily injecting "conflict" into a movie that's really more of an observational comedy of gradual discovery, and that should have embraced this aspect of itself more defiantly. With each scene, The Talent Given Us seems less like a documentary-drama hybrid and more like a reality TV show, or the kind of hard-edged improvisational sitcom that might air on Showtime or HBO. (Emily, in particular, seems to be auditioning for a bit part on Curb Your Enthusiasm; she's an accusatory, know-it-all, insufferably high-strung diva, and she isn't merely aware of this fact-she revels in it.) By the time Andrew's family barge into his apartment when he's not there, discuss his unproduced scripts and watch a videotape of Andrew teaching inspirational lessons to public school kids, the movie seems less an artistic statement than an ad for the director's specialness, which surely could not have been the point.