Review: Lifelines (2008)

[Mark R. Leeper]

                             LIFELINES
                    (a.k.a. WHEREVER YOU ARE)
                (a film review by Mark R. Leeper)

     CAPSULE: REVOLUTIONARY ROAD is not the only film
     this season that features a family being split to
     the tune of bitter argument.  In LIFELINES a
     hugely dysfunctional family spends a day with a
     family counselor.  It is a day of cutting comments,
     raw nerves, telling observations, and eventually
     some understanding.  While the day does not prove
     to be a panacea, it does let the family understand
     each other better and finds a hidden vein of
     concern.  The story produces a gamut of emotions
     from comic to tragic.  This is a moving human
     drama.  Rating: low +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10

The Bernstein family, highly dysfunctional, is composed of five
people, each of whom cannot get along with the other four.  We see
them on what seems to be a typical morning with each of the
children a different problem for the mother Nancy (played by Jane
Adams).  Each of the children has his own reason for bitterness and
that hostility dominates his reactions.  Michael (Robbie Sublett)
is the eldest and withdrawn into his shell, stuttering with self-
doubt.  He may be the most able member of the family.  Young
Spencer (Jacob Kogen) is twelve, hyperactive, and but for the foul
mouth behaves like a spoiled five-year-old.  The biggest pain is
the sixteen-year-old daughter Meghan (Dreama Walker) who has
several names for her mother, all of which end in the word "bitch"
and seem to fit Meghan better than Nancy.  Father Ira (Josh Pais),
is as ineffective as Nancy at controlling the savages.  Central to
all is Nancy, the mother who is shells-shocked and crumbling under
the strain.

We discover that today is not typical at all.  Ira (Josh Pais), the
father, is going to announce he is leaving the family and going to
live with his boyfriend.  To prepare the family for the
announcement and for the giant changes that are coming, the
Bernsteins are seeing a family counselor, Dr. Livingston (Joe
Morton).  This healing step is years late for this family.  In the
beginning Ira plays the game of being over-cooperative, trying to
say exactly what the counselor wants to hear.  Nancy simpers along,
and children do what they can to derail the process.  Soon truths
are being told and we see beyond the annoying shells these people
have chosen to inhabit all the way to the hurt and vulnerability
inside.

Late in the film there is a highly unlikely coincidence that gives
Dr. Livingston a personal connection to this family.  But it is a
real contrivance.  Morton as Livingston, with his shelves full of
toys and puzzles and his hair braided in cornrows, always seems a
little too good and a little too much in control of himself to be
true, at least true to his real self.  He smoothly plays games to
get his clients to reveal the source of their pain.  Later in the
film we learn something unexpected about him but it only serves to
make him seem more noble.  The film raises unreasonable
expectations of family counselors much in the way CSI raises
expectations for crime scene investigation.

Newcomer writer/director/producer Rob Margolies kept to a minimum
of settings so LIFELINES is essentially a stage play, opening out
only in the last third of the film.  A restaurant dinner for the
family is the most enjoyable and witty section of the film, if at
the same time no less dark than the rest of the story.  This film
is touching and occasionally powerful.  If one can get by the early
negative characterizations, it eventually rewards the viewer.  I
rate LIFELINES a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 7/10.  Any
filmmaker who starts his film showing a naked man sitting on a
toilet needs to have a really good reason.  LIFELINES is a good
film, but that pointless touch shows more license than taste.  On
the other hand, I have lived in central New Jersey for thirty-two
years and David Sperling's photography makes it look more beautiful
than I realized that it is.

Film Credits: <http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1127227/>

What others are saying:
<http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/10010084-wherever_you_are/>


					Mark R. Leeper
					mleeper at optonline.net
					Copyright 2009 Mark R. Leeper