La famiglia Fang

This movie was so different compared to any movie I've seen this year, and for a while! It takes us into the mind of a celebrity and how they stage things and work their way to do anything to make art/acting look so real. It was was beautifully done, but definitely not for the faint of heart.

Directed by Jason Bateman and starring Jason Bateman, Nicole Kidman, Christopher Walken and Maryann Plunkett. The plot involves the story of Caleb Fang and Camille Fang, two actors who do things things for a living by hoaxing and staging almost every situation. They have brought up their 2 kids Baxter and Annie Fang into these situations. The kids decide to go their separate ways and back away from their parents "celebrity" lifestyle. Years later they get a call from their parents asking to meet up. They decide it's a good idea and meet up with them. After a huge falling out with their parents officers arrive at the door saying their parents have died. Is it another hoax or is it for real? As stated above, this movie is so different and so true in many aspects. The acting is brilliant (especially from Kidman and Walken.) Kidman's character acted like a child at heart and she did not act her real age at all! Walken was very scary and very nasty as the father. An extremely disturbed man. It takes you into the eyes and mind of a celebrity, such as pretending to fake run in public for better publicity appearances, pretending to eat healthy, pretending a fan is not near you, and most of all...pretending to be normal. Celebrities dragging their children into a sick, twisted, fake game is what this story is about...and as disturbing as that is....it's actually true for a lot of celebrities! It's not exactly a comedy movie. It's more of a Drama movie. It's really hard to watch this. You get to experience the reality of what people/kids have to go through just to be a celebrity!

All in all, i can't say I had fun watching this, but it was definitely a great, original idea and was brilliantly executed! Jason Bateman's directing and even acting gets better by each movie. 4/5 stars 8/10. Autistic Jay

Bad-parent movies are a popular comedy genre that laughs at parents for not being perfect. The drama, thriller or horror versions are more about exploring the dark side of family life and the damage that adults inflict on their young. The offbeat satire The Family Fang (2015) has its funny moments but this is not a comedy. It is a portrait of psychological abuse conducted by parents in the name of art with sinister undercurrents always beneath the surface.

Internationally renowned Caleb Fang (Christopher Walken) and his wife Camille (Maryanne Plunkett) are performance artists dedicated to disrupting the conventions of normality. They stage impromptu happenings in public places simply to witness the sublime beauty of the resulting chaos. Their children Annie (Nicole Kidman) and Baxter (Jason Bateman) have been used as performance props since they were born and their adult lives bear the scars of parenting based on artifice and deception. As youngsters they busked a song "kill all parents so you can keep living" just to get crowd reactions, but they could not foresee the truth in the lyrics nor how their parents would control their lives into adulthood.

The story unfolds backwards with Annie and Baxter at their parent's empty home searching for clues to explain the sudden and violent of disappearance of Caleb and Camille. Police believe the worst but the siblings believe it is just another stunt. While trawling through videos and other memorabilia, they see their lives paraded before them. They realise that they have always been exploited and are victims of unresolved psychological abuse. Through flashbacks, they can see Caleb as a violent personality and Camille as meekly compliant while family gatherings were tension-filled events under Caleb's domination. When the siblings question the value of the performances the reaction is pure menace.

This is a dysfunctional family in both obvious and implied ways, and the film keeps us guessing whether the knotted ball can ever be untangled. The four characters are well defined with strong and believable performances, and the conflicts between young and old are frighteningly recognisable as the kind of things that happen in both normal and transgressive families. When Caleb says "parents damage kids, so what" it sends a shiver down your spine to realise that some people are not psychologically equipped to be parents. Annie and Baxter must confront the fact that letting their parents go may the only way to grow up. This is an original take on an age-old story that is also provocative and engaging.

Abstract

The Family Fang is a certainly strange and intriguing film and not lacking in complexity and interest that reflects on the relationship between art and reality and the deep traces that the artistic narcissism of a father leaves on his children.

Review

During their childhood and adolescence, the Fang brothers participated in "interventions" or performances in public places devised and filmed by their parents. As adults, Annie and Baxter (Nicole Kidman and Jason Bateman), she an actress with an uncertain career and he, a blocked writer, meet them again and must face an unprecedented situation.

The Family Fang is a certainly strange and intriguing film and not lacking in complexity and interest. Two brothers marked by artistic narcissism and the manipulations of their father Caleb (a fearsome and relaxed Christopher Walken), the concessions of a surrendering mother (Maryann Plunkett) and a precocious and unconscious celebrity.

I'm talking about complexity because the ensemble that the director Jason Bateman also makes of the story in the present, flashbacks of the interventions in the past, videos of those interventions and the inclusion of false reports is effective and at times they bring the film closer to mockumentary and reality.

And I speak of interest because the film's explicit and implicit reflections on the relationships between art and reality are understandable, even if they are permeated by Caleb's debatable subjectivity.

Although the development of the story and some decisions or behaviors of the characters may seem forced or implausible, I believe that they must in part be understood based on the deep marks of family history and their artistic creed on the perception of reality and interaction with she.

Finally, it is worth highlighting the performances of the infallible Kidman, Bateman, Plunkett and the great Christopher Walken.

After 'Bad Words', Bateman the director appears to be heading in the right direction and takes on a more ambitious, layered project. This film deals not only with a dysfunctional family, a concept that has fascinated American cinema ever since American Beauty, but also with the relation between art and life. Thematically, the family ensemble has been portrayed more incisively in the recent past (The Squid and the Whale, to name just one example with a similar character ratio), but the manner in which relationships are blurred and redefined here gives Fang a captivating spin.

We are presented with two seemingly wayward, middle-aged siblings who, it turns out, grew up in a tradition of 'intempestive art'. Alongside their eccentric parents, they enacted hoaxes of different scales in front of onlookers who were not in on the game - all with the aim of eliciting life out of the an otherwise mundane, controlled existence. As an accident reunites the family, which had drifted apart in the mean time, tensions persist, culminating when the parents disappear and the obvious question is asked: is this just another hoax?

The story works primarily because Kidman (Annie) and Bateman (Baxter), child A and child B, as their parents called them, convey an understanding that does not require explanations. It's the kind of sibling relationship that draws from so many shared experiences, joys and traumas that it defines a common frame of existence which time has difficulty in erasing. Similarly, we as an audience draw the faith required to suspend our disbelief from the energy the two control when on screen together. The questions pertaining to the philosophy of art, its authenticity and veracity, are interesting to ponder, but they only provide the backdrop to what Annie and Baxter have going on. The point of convergence between the two themes is that of control - its purpose in art, its purpose in relationship building.

This is fascinating, as control is so inherent to anything that happens in the early years within a family: the setting of constraints to the socially unrestrained spirit of childhood. It does not have to be coercive, but it is a matter of natural imprinting that occurs along the way, whether overtly or not. As adults, the struggle becomes to establish what we can (and should) control and what we need to let run freely. The mantra their father had instilled in Annie and Baxter emphasized the idea that by staying centered, one can let the surrounding chaos sweep over and past you. A lot of the time it's easier said than done. We also see that different people need different things in order to express themselves - a given, sure, but finely synthesized in Annie's qualms as an actor and Baxter's writer's block.

Where the story does fall a bit short is in the resolution. In a way, it's predictable and boring, but it's also inevitable. Inevitability is usually a good thing to have in an ending, especially in one dealing with the nature of art. Still, a stronger build up and a more resolute finale would have turned Family Fang into a really memorable piece of work. As it stands, it overemphasizes the idea that unrestrained (performance) art comes at a hidden cost both to those involved and to those affected by it. That it becomes hard to keep art and life contained. And, surely, that the price for this is too high.

Nonetheless, my newly found penchant for movies about siblings really let me enjoy this story. Perhaps just a bit more than I should have, but that's thanks to how authentic Annie and Baxter feel and the depth they lend to the experience.

This Be The Verse, by Philip Larkin, opens with the lines: "They f*ck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do." The Family Fang is basically an exploration of that thesis. The parents of two damaged individuals go missing. The siblings come together to try and find them, one believing they have fallen foul of serial killers, the other thinking this is another prank in a long line of stunts their parents are famous for. All the actors do credible turns, but the themes could be explored more deeply. The revelation that the father never wanted children should impact much more heavily than it does. The waning career of Kidman's actor character seems a slight and peripheral concern. Bateman's near death-by-potato is funny, but doesn't resonate to a deeper malaise. The film carries the comedy well, but the darkness is less truthful and engaging. A spotty film, with bright moments, but I wanted more than it delivered.