YOU CAN COUNT ON ME

8/10

US 2000
dir/scr Kenneth Lonergan
cin Stephen Kazmierski
111 mins
stars Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Matthew Broderick, Rory Culkin

You Can Count On Me is one of the most un-cinematic films of the year - which is the main reason why it’s also one of the very best, an engagingly touching, truthful, mature picture that ranks alongside last year’s Boys Don’t Cry. It’s marvellously refreshing to stumble across these rare American movies which avoid the pitfalls of melodrama, predictability and sentiment that so often trip up even the best-intentioned productions. Lonergan’s script is the strong suit here - marvellously subtle, perceptive and honest, and as a (debutant) director he’s managed to somehow bring it to the screen without screwing any of it up. He trusts the words, he trusts his actors, and the result is a rock-solid character comedy-drama that has something for everyone who’s ever been part of a family.

Though Linney and Ruffalo could hardly look or behave more differently, they’re 100% convincing as Sammy Prescott and her younger brother Terry. Orphaned as youngsters when their parents were killed in the car crash that opens the movie, the Prescotts grew to rely on each other (hence the title) through adolescence before going their separate ways. Terry took off as soon as he could, but Sammy has stayed in their home town, Scottsville in rural upstate New York, now raising her 8-year-old son Rudy (Culkin) on her own - Rudy Sr having left the scene some years back - and holding down a job at the local bank. Churchgoing, conservative Sammy’s routines are disturbed first by the arrival of a new boss (Broderick) who’s even stiffer than she is, then by the unexpected return of Terry, a drifter who’s been all over the country, in and out of trouble with the law.

The basic situation - moody malcontent returns home, stirs up trouble - isn’t anything groundbreaking. But it’s the way Lonergan develops the story that makes You Can Count On Me such a rewardingly absorbing experience. Every scene - even the shortest, most apparently innocuous - is densely packed full of details that tell the audience something new about each of the characters, or explores their relationships that bit further. All of the scenes between Sammy and Terry (initial civilities soon give way to old arguments) and between Terry and Rory (Terry sneaks the kid out for a late-night game of pool at a local bar; later, impulsively drives him the short distance to meet the father Rudy’s never known) are marvellously well-written, convincing examples of what actually happens in real families.

It’s no surprise to learn that Lonergan - plus most of his cast and crew - has much more of a background in the theatre rather than the cinema: Linney and Ruffalo tear into the script, bringing a rare depth and intelligence to characters which could easily have descended into stereotypes, and Lonergan himself makes a low-key impact in his two scenes as Sammy’s slow-talking vicar. You Can Count On Me has been, at various stages in its development, both a one-act play and a short story, and while Lonergan doesn’t do very much with his camera in terms of telling the story, low-budget celluloid feels right for the material, thanks partly to Lonergan’s typically restrained deployment of a string-quartet score. This film unapologetically takes place in a small world, populated by apparently unremarkable people, not the sort of characters who would normally have a film made about them. A small world - but, more importantly, a real world.