Parents' Guide to The Bad Family

The Bad Family is an ambitious and puzzling work. Recording lives in turmoil has value, helping us understand social ills and perhaps how to help people avoid and overcome them. But as this attempts to be true to its subjects by presenting everyone in their own words, with neither interfering voice-over nor narrative, it also omits information that would explain what's going on as we are thrown into the middle of these lives. At times, more than a dozen friends are together celebrating, but it seems that six of them committed a crime. Some went to jail for it. All were required to pay restitution. What were the circumstances of the crime? Assault with a deadly weapon is mentioned in court, but who was assaulted? What was the weapon? Who did the assaulting? To whom are the defendants paying the restitution? How can we empathize with, assess, or care about the people in this film without some basic knowledge? Artful close-ups can't substitute for structure and information. Why are some of the perpetrators out free while others are in jail? What are their family backgrounds? Do they have parents or any family members who care about them? Were they loved as children? Abused? We have no information.

Only a written description of the movie makes it clear that most of the running time is devoted to Andres when he's out on a weekend leave from jail -- this is news, as at first it seems he's been released completely. Viewers must pick up clues from meandering real conversations that, by definition, haven't been crafted by scriptwriters to explain the plot. This approach certainly makes the action gritty and real, but also hard to follow. And without a narrative intervention or comprehensive organizational scheme to guide us, we are often left to wonder what the point is of this. Is it going somewhere satisfying? Will it be worth sitting through? Social anthropologists may find the content useful and informative, but the casual moviegoer may struggle.