Let’s get this out of the way: anyone expecting Florian Zeller’s second film to match his Oscar-nominated debut, The Father, for complexity and ingenuity will be disappointed. The Son, which, like The Father, was adapted by Zeller from his stage play, is a solid, affecting domestic drama that deals with a parent – high-achieving lawyer Peter (Hugh Jackman) – struggling to cope with his teenage son’s mental health issues. It’s generally well-acted: Jackman is terrific, his expensive equilibrium knocked off kilter by his son’s failure to thrive. And in a single, scathing cameo, Anthony Hopkins drenches the screen in bile and hate. But compared with Zeller’s earlier film, this picture is rather more straightforward in its storytelling and basic in its insights.
The fact that this tale of depression is told from the point of view of the parent rather than of Nicholas (Zen McGrath), the child who is suffering from it, has proved to be controversial. But in fact this is one of the more successful, if uncomfortable elements. Zeller explores how sadness repels; how people involuntarily recoil from depression, perpetuating the isolation of the sufferer.
