*** (out of ****)
Starring Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, and Jon Tenney.
Directed & written by Kenneth Lonergan.
2000 R
Most critics, who are so tired of movies in which everything blows up and everyone is killing each other, will be hard pressed to admit that the protagonists of “You Can Count on Me” are archetypes and the story through which they travel is a formula. The archetypes are the promiscuous single mother, trying to raise her child as best she can while leading a fulfilling life, and the self-destructive loner, who functions with a self-centered, flawed logic that never blames himself and continually lets others down. We’ve seen them both before, we just rarely see them in the same film. What makes “You Can Count on Me” different is that they are brother and sister, and not lovers as we might expect.
Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney are grown siblings whose parents died when they were children. She works as a lending officer at a bank and is having an off-and-on relationship with Jon Tenney. She and her son live in the same house in the same small town where she grew up. Her brother is a deadbeat who comes back to town, in all likelihood, to get money for his pseudo-girlfriend’s abortion. We know he’s a deadbeat because in his opening scene he gets traveling money from his girlfriend, unconvincingly tells her “I love you,” and defends himself by saying “I’m not like everyone says I am.”
By this point we already know several things will happen:
1) The brother will disrupt his sister’s life,
2) The brother will become a father figure for his nephew and therefore rediscover his self-worth,
3) The sister will ask the brother to look after her son, and he will relapse into his self-destructive nature and let them both down,
4) The brother will visit the graves of his parents,
5) The brother will get into a fight that leads him to the backseat of a squad car,
6) Both the brother and the sister, through a greater understanding of themselves and each other, will find strength to carry on within self-revelation,
7) The sister will recoil from a telephone as if doing so will actually distance her from the trouble it contains (okay, I didn’t actually predict this would happen, but I find it hard to believe such a cliché would pop up in movie so hyped for being realistic and groundbreaking).
All this I knew from the color scheme on the movie’s poster. But what makes “You Can Count on Me” a bit remarkable is how well writer-director Lonergan develops his types, and how well he fills the corners of his lives with bit characters. Both Linney and Ruffalo give fine, restrained performances, although Ruffalo seems to have modeled his performance heavily on Marlon Brando-as-Terry Malloy. Matthew Broderick, as Linney’s new boss and eventual fling, is developed three-dimensionally, as opposed to just a lusty oppressor and then a jilted, jealous ex-lover. Linney’s other love interest is a genuinely kind, patient man, who never gets angry at her indecisiveness. The sheriff that tells the children their parents are dead is still the sheriff when they are grown, and he is still an honest, decent man. There’s also Father Ron, who, in my favorite scene, meets with the self-destructive Ruffalo, and instead of merely chanting “Jesus is the answer to everything, and there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it,” starts from square one in trying to explain that Ruffalo is important as a human being in the grand scheme of things. Ruffalo, in an amazing turn of dialogue, responds that he wants to believe all that, but he wants to believe it because it is true, not just because it makes him feel good, and he can’t make himself feel it is true. It’s so rare to find minds meeting in film.
The big character revelation about the siblings is that they are maladjusted because they lack parental authority. Linney’s lovers are calm and understanding, but she seems to want someone to boss her around, just a little, as a parent would. When she confronts Father Ron concerning her affair with her married boss, she wants hellfire and threats to her soul, she wants authority, not Ron’s psychology (although, once again, I found it so refreshing to see a churchman portrayed as being sympathetic instead of just a hypocrite, as they are in so many movies). Ruffalo is, of course, still just a big kid, not so much in his actions, but in his self-centered attitudes. The snag in this revelation is that these two children were orphaned in 1980s New York state, not 1920s Alabama. Where are their foster parents or godparents? “You Can Count on Me” acts as if they went directly from being preadolescent orphans to troubled grown-ups with no intervening years.
Lonergan carries all this out with the same restraint as his actors. To his credit, there are no big speeches or artificial tear-jerker moments, and the siblings’ revelation about their lack of parents isn’t spelled out as obviously as I’ve made it sound. Lonergan’s direction, while not remarkable, is clean and efficient. Linney’s single mom is much more affable than Julia Roberts in “Erin Brockovich,” and elements like drug abuse, infidelity, and pregnancy are treated gently, as opposed to sensationalistically. “You Can Count on Me” is a competent and thoughtful character study that intrigued me while I watched it, even if the assembled pieces are sometimes familiar.
Copyright 2002 Friday & Saturday Night