GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE
NOVEMBER 24, 1995
Evenings Out
Holiday film gives us a glimpse of the familiar
Jodie Foster
Robert Downey, Jr.
by Doreen Cudnik
The catch phrase on the poster for Jodie Foster's new film Home for the Holidays may ring true for many of us as we contemplate the annual trek home for Thanksgiving: "On the fourth Thursday in November, 84 million American families will gather together and wonder why." As many of us look with trepidation toward the journey, this film offers at least the comfort of knowing that we are not alone in our anguish.
Directed by Jodie Foster and starring Holly Hunter, Robert Downey, Jr. and Anne Bancroft, Home for the Holidays tells the story of Claudia Larson, a 40-year-old single mom who works in a Chicago art museum restoring classic paintings. After having a near-religious experience restoring a work of art filled with heavenly cherubs and billowy clouds, Claudia is told by her boss that she is being let go due to cutbacks in funding for the arts.
Reeling from that news and a horrible head cold, Claudia dreads the visit to her parents' home. Not able to convince her 15year old daughter Kitt to make the trip home to Baltimore with her, Claudia reluctantly heads out alone.
Kitt, played with mature wisdom by Claire Danes of My So-Called Life fame, acts more like the parent on the way to the airport as she assures her frazzled mother that everything is going to be all right, and to "just float" through it. But just to add to Claudia's stress,
Kitt informs her matter-of-factly that she has decided to have sex with her boyfriend, saying it's something they've talked about and that they will do it “safely, of course."
Besides not being joined by her daughter, Claudia is distraught that her gay brother Tommy (Robert Downey, Jr.) won't be coming from Boston to join the family for the holidays. Claudia places an urgent Airfone call to her brother, leaving a desperate message on his machine and pleading for his company and support over the holiday weekend.
When Claudia is greeted at the airport by her parents Adele and Henry (Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning), they instantly make her feel as if she were ten years old. “Where's your coat?" Mom asks. "You'll freeze to death." This of course, takes place while Dad's camcorder is running, capturing all the dysfunctional action.
Over the next thirty-six hours, Claudia investigates her feelings about her simultaneously overwhelming and endearing parents, who talk to, at and over each other; her slightly off-balance Aunt Glady who harbors a passion for her brother-in-law Henry; her emotionally distant sister Joanne (Cynthia Stevenson) with her conservative banker husband and their two perfect children.
Claudia's delight is mixed with a little disappointment when brother Tommy does show up, but with a mysterious friend, Leo Fish, and not his partner Jack, whom Claudia obviously cares for deeply.
All hell breaks loose at the dinner table when all the family secrets, as well as some pent-up emotions come spilling out. In a freak turkey-carving accident which results in the bird ending up in sister Joanne's lap, a woman who definitely hates a mess, the truth about Tommy and Jack's relationship comes to light. As Joanne venomously informs the family that Tommy and Jack got married on a public beach in Boston, she says, “Did you ever think that I might know people in Boston, Tommy?" It was great, sitting in the theater in a fairly conservative suburb, to hear someone in the audience reply to Joanne's question with a vehement "So what!"
The handsome Leo Fish turns out to be only a business partner of Tommy's—and a straight one at that much to Claudia's relief. The family reacts to the news of Tommy's nuptials with a mixture of emotions; Dad asks his son if he wore a dress, Mom's main beef is that she didn't get any pictures of the event, Claudia is amazed she didn't know about it, hitting her brother playfully and saying, "I tell you everything!”
There is a touching moment when Jack calls after dinner and dad Henry answers the phone. After the preliminary small talk, Henry offers Jack his congratulations saying jokingly, "You're a good kid... you deserve better," before handing the phone to his son. Tommy's face registers pure contentment as he talks with his partner, who is hosting a party of their friends, asking him "How's my
real family?" You see Tommy relax as the conversation continues, and the gay couple is presented for all of America to see as one of the most loving and stable couples in the film.
Perhaps that is due to the sensitive direction of Jodie Foster, who, whether or not she publicly claims her place at the "family" table, is definitely hip to our issues. Foster said she was attracted to the script because "it was a lovely piece of chaos. . . a wonderful tapestry of people's lives that are interwoven." Foster elaborates, “Like every movie I make, it's all about people who are desperately trying to connect."
In the end, what makes Home for the Holidays so comic is the universality of the family connection and the potentially combustible circumstances that surround such holiday gatherings.
Screenwriter W.D. Richer summed it up when he said, "This movie is basically about going home, feeling like you're the walking wounded and discovering that everybody has problems. You manage to put things in perspective and find yourself upright at the end. Even the things you hated about your parents are now perceived, as you get older, as maybe wonderful virtues. That's how it is for Claudia. I think it's all of us . . . if we just pause for a second and say 'God, I hate to go home, but I'm glad there's a place to go home to.'"