Un air de famille

Family Resemblances, an oustanding and outrageous dinner party, directed by Cédric Klapisch, is named one of the "ten best films of the year" by Time Out New York. It is a sharp and biting comic drama about a dysfunctional upper middle-class French family, coexisting "peacefully" in forced politeness, unvoiced opinions and endless compromises, that gets together for dinner once a week. In this family we find a mother who knows how to criticize with a simple glance, her two grown sons, one successful, the other not-so-successful, an unmarried daughter with a penchant for making trouble, and two daughter-in-laws who are complete opposites. In one evening and during one meal, when the group celebrate a birthday in a restaurant, family history, tensions, collective and separate grudges, delights, and memories both clash and coalesce. But in advance of the celebration they all find themselves in full swing, family politics and petty squabbling erupts into a tour-de-force of comic verbal jousting and dramatic confrontations. And all this circus is hold in the presence of phlegmatic waiter, who sometimes try to settle the situation. While no one emerges unscathed from this settling of old emotional scores, each member of the family leaves with a new awakening and an appreciation for each other. (forgalmazó hivatalos szövege)