THE SQUID AND THE WHALE
Directed & Written by: Noah Baumbach.
Produced by: Wes Anderson, Peter Newman, Charles Corwin & Clara Markowicz.
Director of Photography: Robert Yeoman.
Edited by: Tim Streeto.
Music by: Dean Wareham & Britta Phillips.
Released by: Samuel Goldwyn/Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Country of Origin: USA. 88 min. Rated: R.
With: Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney, Jesse Eisenberg, Owen Kline, Halley Feiffer, Anna Paquin & William Baldwin.

Under the combustible glare of a magnifying glass, the battle lines within the Berkman family are drawn in the opening scene. Both parents let there competitive sides out during a doubles tennis match, with Bernard (Jeff Daniels) exploiting his wife's weak backhand. Soon enough, he and Joan (Laura Linney) announce they are separating - to no one's surprise but their shocked children, Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), 16, and Frank (Owen Kline), 12. The parents agree to share custody on alternate days, shuttling the boys between Joan's elegant Brooklyn Heights brownstone and Bernard's fixer-upper. But even after the split, tension between the parents remains high as blow-hard Bernard's writing career stalls and Joan's debut novel wins acclaim (he refers to Kafka as "one of my predecessors").

Rather than a coming-of-age tale for the boys, this is more of a coming apart. Like his father, Walt has his own dellusions of grandeur, appropriating a Pink Floyd song as his own work: "I felt I could have written it, so the fact that it was already written was kind of a technicality." And unlike most teenagers in 1986 (when the film is set), Walt has a poster of Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore. The younger brother, on the other hand, sides with his mother, letting her hide books under his bed from dad (literature is the settlement's sticking point). With parental boundaries as firm as Jell-O, Frank spews obscenities unchecked at his father and guzzles beer while home alone.

Director Noah Baumbach's script has a lean fleetness that his debut feature, Kicking and Screaming, lacked. His new film ventures into frank (pun intended) sexual territory à la Todd Solondz, but without a whiff of condescension towards its characters. No matter how cruelly they may behave, their love for each other is never completely absent, which is why Walt's anger towards his mother is particularly virulent (though in Bernard's case, it takes a mini-emergency to bring his out.)

This is certainly Daniels' best role in years. His Bernard is the older, angrier version of the thoughtless academic, Flap Horton, in Terms of Endearment. He and the rest of the cast play their roles with uncommon ease, especially Owen Kline as Frank, and Eisenberg proves his vulnerable and understated performance in Roger Dodger was no fluke. Linney's Joan is actually more deceptive than Bernard. Patient and clear-headed, she can be just as selfish as her ex. One night, Bernard takes Walt and his date to see Blue Velvet. Left alone again, Frank runs away to Joan, who with her gentle voice and wan smile turns the boy away at her door, telling him she needs some nights without him (besides, she has a date waiting for her upstairs in bed). And laughing with glee, she relishes mocking Bernard in front of their children. Even if the insufferable Bernard may be overwritten - "[Elmore] Leonard is the filet of the crime genre" - the film always keeps its wry sense of humor intact. Kent Turner
October 5, 2005