Junebug

My favorite moments at home are when we are sat, the four of my family, around the dinner table. Where we talk, or laugh, or don't (oh, and eat - we do that too). Where I can watch the most important things in my life interact and I can love them: a face, a smirk, a story and the familiar grace in these nuanced, connecting gestures. It's with a similarly attuned eye, then, that I watched Junebug, a film of family and the problems and responses its love comprises.

There are plenty of interactions here: quiet and loud, between siblings and strangers, between generations and across obstacles impossibly large, invisible only to the eye. The premise: a young man, George, brings back to his Carolina home a city-suave wife, and she doesn't fit in, not exactly. But, thank goodness, it's not a simple case of outcast vs. hard-to-break family, and as the movie spreads its generous reach, it becomes clear that in fact few things fit together very easily. Instead, the characters have convincingly realistic and identifiable methods of - and this won't sound right - dealing with each other. What I mean is loving each other, but where dealing sounds harsh, loving comes off as zealous and overly happy. So think of where they overlap, which is likely to occur more often than you'd think. It's also why we watch movies like Junebug, portraits of unremarkable people in seemingly unflattering circumstances. Maybe resolution doesn't come, but it's not the angles (or lack thereof) at fault, and so it's not as frustrating as it would seem. Our omniscience shows us there's an undeniable graciousness, really, it's not so sad, in the pockets of this film, in the inherent loneliness and the admirable fortitude of family.

It's this kind, honest eye and deft acting which set Junebug apart from similarly quirky movies by lending it a warm-yet-substantial weight. As in reality, there are no protagonists or villains per se, only faults and mercies, mistakes and the way we deal with them, the way we always try (there is one particularly heartbreaking scene where Ben McKenzie's younger-fuck-up-brother character is trying, desperately, to do something for his wife, surprisingly selflessly - though it doesn't work out, there's a feeling of assurance that it will, another time, it will). And, true to life, there is an inaudible dinner scene where the glances and the faces say it all, and we glimpse contented hearts, people loving as we have.