Some families have skeletons in their closets. This one apparently has an entire science experiment.
Family reunions are already awkward enough without throwing decades of resentment, alcoholism, and a bizarre scientific revelation into the mix. Pablo Trapero’s & Sons, adapted from David Gilbert’s novel with a screenplay by Sarah Polley, takes the familiar story of a dysfunctional family and gives it a wonderfully strange twist.
Bill Nighy plays Andrew Dyer, a once-celebrated novelist who has spent the last two decades hiding away in his enormous estate, seemingly more committed to drinking and avoiding responsibility than maintaining relationships with his children. When he unexpectedly summons his estranged sons, Richard (Johnny Flynn) and Jamie (George MacKay), home, it’s clear that this won’t be your typical family gathering.
Nighy is an ideal choice for a character who is simultaneously fascinating and deeply unpleasant. Andrew is the kind of father who seems to believe that being intellectually gifted excuses being emotionally unavailable. The film’s greatest strength lies in its exploration of how one man’s selfishness can leave an entire family struggling to move forward.
What makes & Sons particularly intriguing is its willingness to venture into unexpected territory. Just when the story appears to be settling into a conventional family drama, it introduces an element of absurdity that challenges the audience’s expectations. It’s an unusual creative gamble, one that gives the film a distinctive identity, even if its competing ideas don’t always fit comfortably together.
There is something darkly amusing about watching a family attempt to unpack years of emotional damage while their patriarch continues to make everything about himself. Beneath the eccentric premise is a surprisingly relatable question: What happens when the person responsible for your childhood trauma is also the person you’re still hoping will finally understand it?
& Sons is an ambitious, occasionally peculiar examination of fatherhood, legacy, and the emotional baggage parents leave behind. It might not offer the comforting resolutions audiences expect from a family drama, but perhaps that’s the point. Some fathers leave their children an inheritance. Others leave them enough unresolved issues to keep a therapist employed for decades.
& Sons is available in theatres now.
