The Son

Director Florian Zeller follows up on his remarkably successful ‘The Father’ with another film based on one of his stage plays, a film that is just as affecting… Several years after his parents' divorce, gloomy 17-year-old Nicholas (Zen McGrath) no longer feels at home with his mother, Kate (Laura Dern). His father, Peter (Hugh Jackman), and his new partner, Beth (Vanessa Kirby), decide to take Nicholas in, in an attempt to get his life back on track. Peter does everything he can to be a better father to his son than his own father (Anthony Hopkins) was to him. But are all the well-intentioned worries enough to help Nicholas…? Once again, Zeller brings together a fabulous cast to make a fabulous film. ‘“The Son” is a beautifully composed and literate drama with impeccable performances, especially from Jackman… I think [the film] is about the middle-aged generation’s fear of and incomprehension of the young. Peter looks into Nicholas’s face – sometimes smiling, sometimes crying, sometimes eerily blank – and can see nothing there that tells him the truth about what his son is thinking and feeling and what he should be thinking and feeling in return… This is such a powerful and literate film.’—Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian