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Common Sense Note

Parents should know that this is a film for mature viewers, dealing with difficult emotional and moral themes. The family members are hurtful to one another, by deceit, betrayal, quarreling, and spitefulness. Characters smoke occasionally and drink frequently (an underage child drinks beer); one character vomits in a toilet. Most of the sexual content is narrated, as characters describe personal histories and desires, often with graphic language (slang for genitals, frequent uses of the f-word). Some characters engage in sexual activity (a college student kisses her teacher, young couple kisses, mom has affair with tennis pro, a shot from Blue Velvet shows breasts, a young boy masturbates on library books, wipes his semen on a locker, tries on a condom). Some minor violence, including brothers fighting, a wife slapping her estranged husband, an accidental bloody nose.

Families can discuss the ways this family deals with pain and betrayal: how do the academic parents miss their sons' emotional strains? How do the father's high standards put pressure on his children? How might the kids (eventually) come together in their efforts to survive their difficult situation?

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Common Sense Review

Reviewed By: Cynthia Fuchs

Provocative and intelligent, THE SQUID AND THE WHALE focuses on a family's painful dissolution. Its primary point of view belongs to Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), who is mad -- at his divorcing parents Joan (Laura Linney) and dad Bernard (Jeff Daniels), and his 12-year-old brother Frank (Owen Kline). Walt also feels guilty about the breakup, as well as angsty and twingey because of his 16-year-old hormones.

As Noah Baumbach's reportedly autobiographical film tracks Walt's slow evolution during the months surrounding the divorce (in 1986 Park Slope, Brooklyn), it keeps something of a distance, wry and observant. A once famous novelist, Bernard is now a frustrated creative writing professor who sucks up his female students' crushes like air. He carries around Saul Bellow's The Victim and takes out his umbrage on Joan, who can't help but notice.

Bernard takes up residence across the park, in what he calls "the filet of the neighborhood," leaving the family house and the cat in Joan's care. They arrange a scheme so the boys move between apartments on alternate nights, as if this will ease the transition. Frank is so undone by their bickering that he's soon discovered by school library staff masturbating onto books, the sign of love and value in his own family (indicated most acutely when Joan hides her books away in Frank's bedroom so that Bernard can't steal them away).

For his part, Walt absorbs Bernard's evaluation of the local tennis pro, Ivan (Billy Baldwin), whose generosity appeals to Frank and Joan both. Bernard calls Ivan "a bit of a philistine," performing a passive aggression that Walt mimics later. When Frank says he hates dad's home and wants to go home, Walt uses his dad's language to disparage him: "Don't be a chick."

At the same time, Walt develops a crush on classmate Sophie (Halley Feiffer), but can't seem to help himself, declaring, "You shouldn't have so many freckles on your face." Though Sophie's self-confident enough not to take this abuse, Bernard's student Lili (Anna Paquin) is inclined to act out her insecurities. She flirts with both Bernard and Walt after she moves into a spare room at Bernard's.

Providing such detail concerning Walt's disintegrating psyche, the film is occasionally clunky (he sees a museum exhibit called "The Squid and the Whale," warring natural forces like his parents). For the most part, it is a harrowing but rewarding contemplation of the pain family member bring on each other.

Families who like this movie might also see You Can Count on Me (which also stars Linney), or other families coming apart movies, such as We Don't Live Here Anymore, The Ice Storm, or The Virgin Suicides, all rated R.

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Content
		CS	adults	kids
Sexual Content Heavy sexual content, in verbal and visual forms (language includes slang for genitals and activity); masturbation by a young boy, who also tries on a condom; parents engage in adulterous affairs and talk about them; teacher tries to seduce his female student.
Violence Some slapping, fighting, and emotionally distressed interactions.
Language Frequent uses of the f-word, plus sexual slang, s-word, "damn," "ass."
Message
	Social Behavior Parents are cruel to one another.
	Commercialism
	Drug/Alcohol/Tobacco Frequent drinking and some smoking.

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