SSometimes, and perhaps more and more often, the fun of films lies in the little things. The likeable Netflix romantic comedy A family affair, Written by newcomer Carrie Solomon and directed by Richard LaGravenese, an experienced director and screenwriter who knows what he’s doing, the film treads on territory already familiar from a film that came out earlier this year: an “older” single mother stumbles into an affair with a much younger man, drawing the judgement and ridicule of those around her. We’ve just seen this idea, quite delightfully executed, in The idea of you, with Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine. A family affair, It is the successful writer Brooke Harwood, played by Nicole Kidman, who falls in love with the conceited movie star Chris Cole (Zac Efron). However, there is another complication: Brooke’s daughter Zara (Joey King) is Chris’ personal assistant and she can’t stand him.
One might complain that two films dealing with the same subject matter, released within a few months of each other, is perhaps one film too many. (The idea also appears in the great erotic drama by French filmmaker Catherine Breillat.) Last summer, (which premiered at Cannes in 2023 and is currently in US theaters.) Or you could see this mini-trend as evidence that several filmmakers are smelling the same smell in the air: women over 50 don’t want to be discarded; they want to be seen, appreciated, loved. The idea is so simple that you wonder why people don’t five Films like this one every year, for 50 years. But here we are: the whole older woman and younger man thing is still so novel that we can hardly believe our eyes when we see it.
A family affair begins with Zara at the end of her rope with childish, demanding Chris, the pumped-up and snooty star of a hit action-fantasy franchise. He’s at a restaurant, about to break up with his sweet if boring girlfriend, who is expecting a marriage proposal. His parting gift is a pair of diamond earrings – nice work when you can get them – but he doesn’t have them with him. They’re in Zara’s bag, and she’s stuck in typically awful Los Angeles traffic. Eventually, she delivers the earrings, and Chris, callous and clueless, does so. Zara picks him up to drive him home, and he fidgets in the passenger seat, clapping along to Cher’s “I Believe in Love” blaring from the car stereo, feeling every beat in his cold, hollow, yet undeniably wild heart. Zara rolls her eyes.
Later, they argue. He fires her, or she quits, it’s hard to say which. But Chris likes Zara and he needs her. Hoping to win her back, he goes to her home, or rather, to the not-so-shabby house she shares with her mother, Brooke, who is glamorously dusting her bookshelves and listening to Blondie’s “Dreaming” when Chris arrives. She doesn’t hear him ring the doorbell, so he just goes in – he’s a movie star, so he can do this! Even he knows it. After a few crazy moments of her making sure he’s not a burglar, the two sit down on the couch and just start talking. There’s tequila involved, and one thing leads to another.
You’ve probably seen something like this before, but Solomon and LaGravenese (whose resume stretches back to very entertaining love stories like 1998) Live out loud) aren’t so much concerned with refreshing genre conventions as they are with relying on their eternal reliability. Brooke is a long-time widow. (She’s very close to her mother-in-law, played with verve by Kathy Bates.) Zara freaks out when she finds out her mother is romantically involved with her awful boss, but she has to learn that the world doesn’t revolve around her.
The part where the film learns its lesson is where it falters. The best part of A family affair is the opening scene, the scenes in which Brooke and Chris get to know each other. On their first real date, Chris asks Brooke if she wants to go for a walk after dinner. “Where do you go for a walk in LA?” she asks. “New York!” he says cheerfully, because in the dream world of Los Angeles you are never far from a recording studio. Although the exchange of blows between Efron and Kidman is quite amusing – the two have already played lovers once, in the 2012 film The Paper Boy– it can take a little getting used to their faces. There has been a lot of talk online about Efron’s jaw, which has changed dramatically in size and shape in recent years. Efron has calmly dismissed speculation, claiming he had a serious accident years ago that required his jaw to be sewn back on – hence the change in shape. And Kidman – well, she’s Kidman. Perhaps we need to accept the reality that for a fifty-year-old to be able to dress a thirty-year-old, you must have semi-miraculously slowed the ravages of time itself.
But that’s Hollywood, and this film is, after all, set in a land of fantasy. When it sparkles, which is often, it’s thoroughly entertaining. Efron has always been a great actor, long before audiences started to “take him seriously,” whatever that means, in The Iron Claw. His timing is dazzling. In an early scene, he sends Zara to the supermarket to buy a special protein powder—he’s too famous to show up there himself—and she calls him to make sure she’s buying the right kind. As she pushes her cart through the store, she marvels aloud at the myriad varieties of Oreos in the cookie aisle. When she gets to “Strawberry Shortcake,” we see Chris at home, listening on the phone, his eyes flashing like lightning. “You want something?” Zara asks him hesitantly. “Yes!” he says, as if he’s just become aware of one of the great wonders of the modern world. It’s questionable whether the actual product will live up to that promise, but isn’t that always the case when it comes to marketing? Later, he’ll find the real product with Kidman’s Brooke. Together, the two are almost too unreal for words. This is Hollywood too – a place where age definitely matters in real life. not just a number. But we can dream, right?
