LAFF 2011: THE FATHERLESS

A scene from The Fatherless.

Paternal disfigures

By Ed Rampell 

Written and directed by Marie Kreutzer, Austria's The Fatherless is sort of a cross between John Sayles’ 1980 Return of the Scaucus Seven, Lawrence Kasdan’s 1983 The Big Chill, Mike Leigh’s stellar 1996 Secrets & Lies, the 2000 Swedish commune movie, Together, and the recently concluded HBO plural marriage series, Big Love. 

The story opens with the death of the enigmatic Hans (Johanness Krisch), who owned the house where a very extended family lived collectively during the 1980s. His scattered children converge for the occasion, including Kyra (Andrea Wenzl, giving a standout performance in her film debut), who was mysteriously banished 23 years ago when she was still a child.

At this rather odd family reunion, Mizzi (Emily Cox), who has a strange disability, discovers for the first time that she has an older sister, Kyra. In the wake of their father’s death, they, and the rest of the tribe, try to come to terms with one another and to unravel the many mysteries.

One of the more talked about films at LAFF 2011, The Fatherless is a superbly well acted ensemble film that’s also quite well crafted, as it shifts from the present back to the past. It also probes the nature of communal living in a consumer society where materialism and ultra-individualism are accentuated and valued. With The Fatherless, Kreuzer's debut is the mother of an insightful, thought provoking, family drama squared.