'It's not what you do it's the way that you do it'. Hmm. If you're going to make a film about a dysfunctional family who are in denial about a past tragedy, and who bring it all up over a gut- spilling weekend, do something interesting with it. As usual it's set in an unspeakably gloomy house in a dreary, desolate suburb, but it might as well be performed on an empty stage. It would certainly have been cheaper. The father is your usual beer drinking, car-obsessed, loud- mouthed bully, written, like most of the script with equal proportions of cliché and pretension, and played with lamentable obviousness. The rest of the cast come off slightly better with their archetypes: the tense, passive sister; the successful brother from the city, who runs away from conflict; and, of course, the suicidally loopy brother in the upstairs room, who never speaks. To be fair there are some moments of quiet, touching tenderness, usually when no-one is speaking. But when the olde moodily lit shot of the kitchen tap dripping popped on to the screen, it seemed to sum the whole thing up: we've seen it all before, done better.
