..Gary Dretzka
..Noah Forrest
..Leonard Klady
..David Poland
..Douglas Pratt
..Ray Pride
..Kim Voynar
..Michael Wilmington

Lymelife
Directed by Derick Martini

Derick Martini's Lymelife is a thoughtful coming-of-age drama set in 1979 on Long Island, a time and place when suburbs and planned communities were expanding, money and success were all-important, and change was in the air. Martini co-wrote the film with his brother Steve as a way of exploring their own dysfunctional family through the lens of the generational change wrought by the exodus to the suburbs through the character of Scott (Rory Culkin), an awkward teenager who's struggling through that period of adolescence when you suddenly see your parents through different eyes as fallable, flawed humans who don't have all the answers-- or even all the right questions.

Scott is also suffering from a bad case of teenage love for his longtime best girl-friend, 16-year-old Adrianna Bragg (Emma Roberts), who's suddenly blossomed into a young woman exploring her own sexual power and sexuality through both her friendship with Scott and flirtation with an older guy. Scott's father, Mickey (Alec Baldwin, who also produced), is a former construction worker-turned-real-estate developer who's gotten so caught up in his role as financial provider for his family and his success in his business life that he's lost sight of everything else, including his sons and wife; he's fallen into being so completely self-focused that he buys his wife, Brenda (Jill Hennessy) a birthday gift in the form of a new house that he -- not she -- wants.

Brenda doesn't want the big money, she doesn't want the fancy house; she just wants their simpler life in Queens back, and she resents Mickey for providing the financial lifestyle that affirms his own need to feel like a successful husband and father, when what she wants and needs is his attention and emotional support.

Meanwhile in Adrianna's family, dad Charlie (Timothy Hutton) is afflicted with Lyme disease; Long Island is experiencing an epidemic of the tick-borne illness, which is carried around by the stately deer that inhabit the woods in the area. Charlie contrated Lyme disease on a hunting trip with Mickey and Scott, so now, everytime Scott goes out, Brenda, much to his humiliation, wraps his ankles, wrist, and even his hat with duct tape to protect him. Charlie's illness has left him unable to work, a change that's shifted the balance of power in the Bragg household, forcing mom Melissa (Cynthia Nixon) to take a job selling property in the planned community Mickey is building in order to support her family; it's a role she never expected to play, and it's caused herto view her husband in a different light.

Scott's relieved when big brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) comes home for a brief military leave before deployment to the Faulkland Islands; Jimmy knows how to defuse their parents' battles, knows how to cheer their mother up, and protects his little brother from the school bully in a great scene that reveals as much about the anger and frustration inside Jimmy that comes out in outbursts of violence as it does about his prowess with his fists.

In a sense, Jimmy's grown to play the role of the man in the family emotionally, filling the void in Brenda's life left by Mickey's obsessions with success, money and other women. But Jimmy has to leave again, right as Scott is going through confirmation at the Catholic church -- the spiritual step into adulthood -- and seeing his father, who he's always looked up to, from the precipice of adult understanding.

The well-crafted script feels real and honest, but the solid acting throughout elevates Lymelife above your average indie coming-of-age drama. The Culkin brothers bring their real-life brotherly dynamic to their roles, and their interactions -- Jimmy's minor bullying of Scott, even as he defends him from anyone else who would dare to mess with him, the looks across the dinner table as they struggle to find the right things to say when Brenda's fragile and upset, ring true at every turn; one of the film's best visual moments is the framing of the amused smirk of an older brother as his kid brother pukes after drinking too much for the first time in the background, while Brenda comforts Scott, thinking it's just a stomach bug.

Rory Culkin and Emma Roberts anchor the film with compelling turns as the teenagers caught in the midst of family turmoil and infidelity; there's a brave scene near the end of the film that I fully expect someone to write about as being exploitative of the young actors, but I found it thoughtful and emotionally honest.

The adult performances are equally strong; Hennessy turns in a powerful, break-through performance that surprised me with its quiet intensity, while Nixon gets to strut her stuff as a sexually attractive woman having an affair that's much more about affirmation, ego and feeling appreciated than about how sexy she is. Hutton is wrenching as Charlie, a man whose life has been utterly taken away by a tiny tick, but who's trying desperately to maintain the illusion of his traditional role as husband and provider. Charlie's unraveling slowly as his life falls away half-completed, like the remodeling work on their home that's left them with plastic sheeting hanging everywhere, and Hutton conveys the desperation of this man to cling to what he's losing, even as he looks to hang the blame for the life that's slipping away from him on anyone but himself.

The powerhouse turn in this film, though, is from Baldwin, who plays Mickey as a bit of a self-centered jerk who is nonetheless not the complete villain of the tale. Relationships aren't black and white, and Mickey's a guy who thinks he's doing the right thing in making big money to support his family, but somewhere along the way he's lost touch with the things that mattered. Baldwin's best moments of the film come after Scott discovers Mickey is having an affair, a revelation that forever shatters the way Scott looks at his father, his mother, and their relationship with each other. Baldwin's utterly naked vulnerability when he realizes he's lost the unconditional love and support of the one person in his little family he could always count on to take his side is one of the finest acting performances I've seen in an indie film, and Martini gets all his cast to rise to that level.

Lymelife is a well-crafted indie drama that looks at life in the imperfect suburbs from a perspective I think Richard Yates would have appreciated; the Martinis get that, while the shift to suburban sprawl certainly traditional family structure, the problems suburban dwellers have come, like everyone else's, not from where they live, but from within.

- Kim Voynar

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