Movie Description:
In his third feature, director Noah Baumbach scores a triumph with an auto- biographical coming-of-age story about ateenager whose writer-parents aredivorcing. The father and mother duke it out in half-civilized, half-savage fashion, while their two sons adapt in different ways, shifting allegiancesbetween parents. The film is squirmy- funny and nakedly honest about the rationalizations and compensatory snob- bisms of artistic failure as well as theconflicted desires of adolescents for sex and status. In detailing bohemian- bourgeois life in brownstone Brooklyn, Baumbach is spot on. Everyone proceedsfrom good intentions and acts rather badly, in spite or because of their manifest intelligence. Fulfilling the best traditions of the American indepen-dent film, this quirky, wisely written feature explores the gulf between sexes,generations, art and commerce, Brooklyn and Manhattan.
