Bravely shows that depressed people can be quite annoying: The Son reviewed

For my money – and lots of other people’s – Florian Zeller’s 2020 film The Father was pretty much a masterpiece. Oscar-winningly adapted from his own play by Zeller and Christopher Hampton, it plunged us into the fractured world of Anthony, an old man with dementia (as Oscar-winningly played by Anthony Hopkins). With different actors playing the same characters and perfectly coherent scenes that kept contradicting each other, we shared Anthony’s struggle to work out who was who and what was what. The result provided a rare combination of tricksy intelligence and emotional punch.

Now, with The Son, adapted with Hampton from another of his plays, Zeller brings us another domestic catastrophe. This time, though, he tells it so straightforwardly that the film unmistakably resembles an old-school well-made play – and a slightly creaky one at that.

Hugh Jackman plays Peter Miller, whose status as a high-flying New York lawyer is immediately established by him saying ‘Hey Jessica, can you send me the Jackson file?’ into his phone. For about 30 seconds, Peter’s life seems idyllic as he smilingly watches his new wife Beth (Vanessa Kirby) singing their baby asleep. But then his ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) shows up with news that their 17-year-old son Nicholas is skipping school and radiating unhappiness.

When Peter goes to see him, Nicholas explains that ‘my life is weighing me down’ and that ‘I feel like I’m going crazy’. He also wants to move in with his dad, who agrees with a carefully delineated mix of nervousness, determination, parental concern and guilt. After all, as Nicholas articulates just as clearly, it was Peter’s decision to abandon the family that has caused all the trouble.

The Son was first shown at the Venice Film Festival in September, where the critics were distinctly sniffy – mainly on the virtuous grounds that Zeller sees Nicholas’s depression primarily from the outside as a problem for his parents.