All this is conveyed not merely through plot and dialogue, but through a highly cinematic weave of sound and image: Set to a delicate score by Carter Burwell (already having quite a year with “Carol” and “Anomalisa”), the film’s time-shuffling structure comes to mirror the very act of scanning one’s family history, searching for memories that will present our loved ones in the best or even worst possible light. But Baxter isn’t so sure, and so brother and sister begin an investigation into the mystery of not just where their parents may have gone, but also who they are, how much they really care about their children, and whether the present state of their career - which declined after Annie and Baxter opted to withdraw permanently - might have driven them into hiding. When Mom and Dad suddenly go missing under troubling circumstances, Annie is convinced that it’s merely the latest manipulative ruse devised by two people well versed in the art of deception. Bateman and Lindsay-Abaire modulate the tension carefully and with a merciful avoidance of histrionics, though after an uncomfortable dinner and several more awkward conversations, it’s plain to see that Dad is the monster of the group, whether he’s dismissing Annie’s career as basically “crap movies and a tampon commercial,” or knocking down Baxter’s attempt to relate to his father as a fellow artist: “Don’t talk about things you know nothing about.” While this all may sound on paper like just another dispatch from the ninth circle of indie-quirkfest hell, “The Family Fang” deepens and darkens as Caleb, Camille, Annie and Baxter come back together at the old homestead in upstate New York - a wonderfully lived-in repository of old memories and countless discarded art projects (courtesy of Beth Mickle’s production design), and filmed in shadowy, richly muted colors by d.p. When a freelance magazine assignment goes awry and unexpectedly lands Baxter in the hospital (in a very funny, energetically cut sequence), the stage is set for an unplanned family reunion, and brother and sister brace themselves - and lean heavily on each other - in expectation of the worst. And clearly, the kids either inherited or absorbed their parents’ creative impulses: Annie is now a well-known film actress, though she’s feeling restless and uncertain about the direction of her career, while Baxter has been trying to finish writing his third novel for the past two years. What parents would do such a thing? The kind who see child rearing as just another way to realize their artistic ambitions to the fullest - and indeed, Caleb and Camille achieved the height of their recognition by the art world when they got their children in on the act (as discussed in a clip of two Artforum types played by Scott Shepherd and Steve Witting). (The younger versions of Caleb and Camille are played by Jason Butler Harner and Kathryn Hahn.) We see many examples of their past work firsthand (in golden-hued re-creations and old video clips), including an early sequence of a phony bank robbery in which young Baxter plays stick-’em-up with a teller, father Caleb masquerades as a security guard, and mom Camille is the innocent bystander who gets gunned down, oozing candy blood while daughter Annie howls in agony, though she’s really trying not to laugh. Well into adulthood, but pointedly lacking any kids or long-term relationships of their own, Annie (Kidman) and Baxter (Bateman) are still trying to process the damage wrought by their parents, a pair of celebrated New York performance artists named Caleb ( Christopher Walken) and Camille Fang (Maryann Plunket), who have mastered a brand of socially deviant, flash-mob-style public fakeout. Centering around a domestic upbringing that would seem extreme and out-there by even the loosest of parenting standards, the picture devotes itself to dramatizing its protagonists’ unique childhood in grounded and believable fashion. By dint of its plot description alone, “The Family Fang” superficially recalls any number of past pictures about the toll of a monstrous father figure on his talented and sensitive children, including Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tenenbaums” and Noah Baumbach’s “The Squid and the Whale.” Although more modest in its aims and achievements than those earlier touchstones, David Lindsay-Abaire’s screenplay (his strongest big-screen effort since “Rabbit Hole,” an earlier Kidman collaboration) boasts a fluid, easily enveloping style that takes a wisely understated approach to a premise that could otherwise have seemed brazenly artificial.
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