Adults need to pass tests to get a license to drive a car, we have to apply to the State Department for a passport to travel abroad: heck, one of these days, we might even have to register to buy handguns, after the UN takes over Texas or something. One feels that there really ought to be some sort of test required for parenthood.
Young Maisie is living what should be an idyllic lifestyle, in a huge Manhattan apartment, with a Rock Star mother, an art dealer father, going to a really cool elementary school with all sorts of bright schoolmates. The problem is that she is just one more shiny accessory in her self- involved parents' lives, analogous to a Louis Vuitton suitcase for them to squabble over when the break-up happens. The only people capable of acting unselfishly towards her are the two pieces of eye candy that the parents take up with after the split, both of whom are pawns in the struggle between Susanna and Beale.
The cast is first rate. Coogan plays his best "Steve Coogan" role, familiar from "Tristram Shandy" and "The Trip": you kind of want to like him, but you wouldn't trust him as far as you can spit him. Alexander Skarsgard and Joanna Vanderham give substance to their peripheral characters, and young Onata Aprile, like Christopher Walken, conveys volumes with just her eyes. Julianne Moore plays an absolute monster, who is allowed one, probably transitory, moment of self- awareness at the very end of the story: other than that, Susanna is just bad news.
Young Maisie is living what should be an idyllic lifestyle, in a huge Manhattan apartment, with a Rock Star mother, an art dealer father, going to a really cool elementary school with all sorts of bright schoolmates. The problem is that she is just one more shiny accessory in her self- involved parents' lives, analogous to a Louis Vuitton suitcase for them to squabble over when the break-up happens. The only people capable of acting unselfishly towards her are the two pieces of eye candy that the parents take up with after the split, both of whom are pawns in the struggle between Susanna and Beale.
The cast is first rate. Coogan plays his best "Steve Coogan" role, familiar from "Tristram Shandy" and "The Trip": you kind of want to like him, but you wouldn't trust him as far as you can spit him. Alexander Skarsgard and Joanna Vanderham give substance to their peripheral characters, and young Onata Aprile, like Christopher Walken, conveys volumes with just her eyes. Julianne Moore plays an absolute monster, who is allowed one, probably transitory, moment of self- awareness at the very end of the story: other than that, Susanna is just bad news.