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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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110689
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p84
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1990-09-22
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CINEMA, Page 84Fetal AttractionBy Richard Corliss
IMMEDIATE FAMILY
Directed by Jonathan Kaplan
Screenplay by Barbara Benedek
The Spectors' car swerves to avoid a boy who has darted out
into the road, and nice Michael (James Woods) mutters to his nice
wife Linda (Glenn Close), "Some people should not be allowed to
have children!" He is voicing a common belief that those who are
having the most kids can't raise them, and those who can afford
kids aren't having them. O.K. then. Who should raise the first
generation of 21st century teenagers? The healthy, efficient
yuppies, who just might be able to fit a child into their Filofax
schedules? Or the chain-smoking unmarrieds of the underclass, with
lives of noisy desperation awaiting them like so many episodes of
Married . . . With Children? In a society where childless can still
be a near synonym for lifeless, are the "wrong" people having too
many kids? Are there any right parents?
Immediate Family touches all these bases lightly, like a
gazelle on a home-run trot. Openhearted and canny, the film offers
few answers, takes no sides. It paints the yups, Linda and Michael,
as decent, attractive people. Their friends' kids may run wild in
a toddler road show of Lord of the Flies, but the Spectors seem
ideal parents-to-be. Yet they can't be biological parents. Every
month Linda says, "I spend two weeks whacked out on fertility
drugs, two weeks depressed that they don't work." In the bathroom,
Michael opens a specimen jar, picks up a well-thumbed copy of
Penthouse and sighs. There is no joy in their rituals, only
emptiness and failure. Time to adopt a baby.
Lucy Moore (Mary Stuart Masterson) has a baby, or will in a few
weeks. In the modern fashion of adoption, the Spectors spend time
getting to know her. And to like her -- Lucy has a lot to like. A
blossom growing out of white trash, she teeters between unaffected
adolescence and poignant maturity. But perhaps the Spectors are
also rehearsing for parenthood; perhaps they are determined to
send sweet signals across the barriers of culture, class and age.
They realize that their ability to adopt her baby depends finally
on Lucy's whim. So, effectively, they adopt Lucy. She is an '80s
Eliza Doolittle in the Spectors' pristine palace, getting a
tantalizing glimpse of the good life on loan. Should her child live
there? She's not sure. Could she live there? In a minute. Forever.
Despite its customized carpeting of a soft-rock score,
Immediate Family isn't exactly sentimental. It's a fond diagnosis
of sentiment, which director Jonathan Kaplan (Heart Like a
Wheel, The Accused) observes with his usual handsome care. Close
and Woods, more familiar playing high-powered candidates for
psychosis, are laser-precise as the Spectors. They work hard at
appearing comfortable in roles without edges. But the Spectors, who
set the film's agenda, cede sympathy to Lucy, as the well-to-do in
movies inevitably do to the poor-but-spunky.
The film's admirable trick is to shift the balance without
opting for heroes and villains. Kevin Dillon, as Lucy's boyfriend,
lists toward the loutish, but he's no jerk. And Masterson's fine,
grace-noted performance is like the film: full of wit, skepticism
and hope for compromises that won't ruin lives. This is a serious
comedy that locates wry smiles in everyone's burdens and
opportunities. The tears come at the end.