Family Ties
Radu Jude’s EVERYONE IN OUR FAMILY is a violent comedy of familial dissent that packs a visceral wallop both painful and tickling.
Radu Jude’s EVERYONE IN OUR FAMILY
Radu Jude’s second feature is a hilarious powder keg of a movie, in which a family squabble gets out of hand and reaches epic proportions of violent absurdity. New Romanian cinema’s affinity for large chunks of real-time action and meticulous mise-en-scene is on full display in EVERYONE IN OUR FAMILY (TOATA LUMEA DIN FAMILIA NOASTRA, Romania/Netherlands), a film that should surely have been included in the Competition rather than the Forum.
The movie’s increasingly volatile center is Marius (Serban Pavlu), a thirtysomething slacker of a dentist, sharing custody of his 5-year-old daughter and just about to take the tot on a trip to the seaside. Things start to go wrong early on, when a brief visit at Marius’ parents goes from cuddly to ugly, with father and son eschewing terms of endearment in a matter of minutes and engaging in a full-blown-shouting match.
All this is a mere prelude, though, to the movie’s second and third act, in which Marius is trying to take his daughter away from his ex-wife, her new lover and her mother for the planned trip. The girl is feverish so mom opposes the idea, which triggers a rapidly snowballing rage in Marius.
Andrei Butica’s hyperactive camera guides us through Marius’ growing anger, comic and horrifying in turn. It’s part of Jude’s achievement that we never perceive the main character as psychotic, even though his behavior goes to scary extremes more than once – not least when he attacks his ex-wife’s lover, beats him into submission with a frying pan, and then gags him and ties him up with what seems like yards upon yards of thick scotch tape.
Marius’ relationship with his ex-wife Otilia (Mihaela Sirbu) is at the heart of the film, and its complicated nature allows for many scenes of strange, violent intimacy that are unlike anything I’ve seen in a long time. The couple exchanges rancid barbs as if they were foul-mouthed versions of 1930s screwball comedy lovers’ quips. At one point, amidst all the verbal filth thrown around, Marius goes down on his knees to profess mad love for Otilia, and the scene makes perfect sense. There’s even a playful glimmer in the woman’s eyes that makes us half-expect a happy ending to emerge from the visceral pressure cooker that the movie has built so effectively.
As far as single-location, hell-raising comedies go, EVERYONE IN OUR FAMILY plays like a homespun version of Harold Pinter’s HOMECOMING, and is vastly more outrageous than Roman Polanski’s recent CARNAGE. The film’s not-to-be revealed coda is both an act of evasion and a perfect final note: as Marius is walking away from the camera, his body is battered but his mad resolve undaunted.
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