Imagine, for one stomach-churning moment, spending a few weeks in close quarters making a feature-length film with — and about — your grown family.
It’s not an inviting prospect, but you are the director so you have the illusion of control. And you are also the screenwriter, so you can weave autobiography and fiction as it suits you.
If you’re not sold on the idea, then you likely won’t enjoy Andrew Wagner’s “The Talent Given Us,” a narcissistic, one-of-a-kind curiosity whose execution is decidedly less interesting than its conceit.
Following its recent well-received screenings in the S.F. Jewish Film Festival, “The Talent Given Us” opens Aug. 26 at the Opera Plaza in San Francisco and the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael. L.A.-based writer-director Wagner will be present for the Friday, Aug. 26, and Saturday, Aug. 27, evening shows.
The gimmick that drives the indie comedy is Wagner’s casting of his New York Jewish parents and sisters as a family. The blend of mockumentary, reality TV and narrative film adds the only layer of interest (and intrigue) to the proceedings, as we find ourselves continuously wondering how closely Wagner drew on actual events and real personality traits — and persuaded his kin to re-enact them on-camera.
But just as Gus Van Sant’s “Last Days” is impenetrable and pointless unless the viewer knows it was inspired by rocker Kurt Cobain’s suicide, “The Talent Given Us” is boring and meandering if you aren’t aware that Wagner cast his parents and siblings as the stars of his film.
Alas, if you are armed with that crucial information, “The Talent Given Us” is boring, meandering and shrill. It is the cinematic equivalent of nails on a blackboard, and the unpleasantness ultimately dwarfs the cleverness and originality of its concept.
The shaggy-dog story centers on a road trip the family takes from New York to Los Angeles in search of an incommunicado son and brother. That would be the filmmaker, of course.
He is not described in a sufficiently interesting way to make us care about the outcome of the journey/plot, so we are left with the characters and family dynamic to carry us. And that’s where “The Talent Given Us” falls woefully short.
The parents, Allen and Judy, are a retired couple who’ve fallen into a routine of bickering about everything and nothing. Whatever happiness they shared in their lives seems so distant as to be nonexistent.
The unmarried sisters are wells of insecurity and neurosis. Emily, who in real life is an L.A.-based television actress, plays an uninspired parody of such a creature, complete with body issues that are more grotesque than amusing. “I’m having a major Warsaw Ghetto fantasy right now,” she remarks, in quasi-anguish over her thighs.
One of the themes of “The Talent Given Us” is the damage — both real and imagined — that parents do to their children. This road trip has arrived 30 years too late, one gathers, for Allen and Judy never bothered to take the family on vacation when the kids were young.
The kids get their payback, though, in subtle digs. But there is no catharsis, no self-revelation, no transcendence. For parents and children alike, there is only the regret of unfulfilled potential and the road not taken.
Since Wagner fails to generate sufficient comedy or pathos, “The Talent Given Us” ends up feeling like the public airing of a family grudge. Stomach-churning, perhaps, but not entertaining.
“The Talent Given Us” opens Friday, Aug. 26, at the Opera Plaza Cinemas, 601 Van Ness Ave., S.F. (415) 267-4893; and the Smith Rafael Film Center, 1118 4th St., San Rafael, (415) 454-1222.