by Mark Brinkherhoff
In high school, I managed to hoodwink my journalism advisor into letting me review movies for our semi-regular school paper. In some cases, these were movies my parents certainly did not approve of (Se7en, Showgirls, etc.); in other cases, there were movies I would have seen anyway but was able to write off as a “class expense.” Home for the Holidays, Jodie Foster’s sophomore directorial effort, fell into the latter camp.
Arriving on a post-Oscar blitz of new films starring Holly Hunter (e.g. Copycat, Crash—no, not that one), Home for the Holidays got lost in the shuffle of both 1995’s crop of holiday fare and its stars own filmography...
What a cast!
But for those of us lucky enough to see it in theaters (or catch it on cable or home video, back when those were still a thing), the rewards for viewers were as ample as they are, at times, strange.
Hunter’s Claudia Larson, a harried, ignominiously fired single mom at the film’s outset, reluctantly travels back to her childhood home (sans daughter) to spend Thanksgiving with the family she clearly dreads. Greeted at the airport by her loving parents, alternatingly daffy and neurotic (though essentially good-natured), Claudia is met with one indignity after another—and that’s before she even gets “home.” Awkwardness abounds, conflict inevitably ensues. But when your parents are played by twin titans, Anne Bancroft and Charles Durning (RIP, both—truly), you clearly did something right, eh?
Throw in a whimsical aunt (Geraldine Chaplin), a humorless shrew of a sister (Cynthia Stevenson—the one real sour note in the clan…and the film’s screenplay), her patsy husband (my boyfriend-in-perpetuity, Steve Guttenberg), two bratty children, etc., and all that’s missing from this Molotov cocktail is the reliable, certifiably mischievous younger brother played winningly by a pre-rehabbed Robert Downey, Jr. That he plays the gay brother, Tommy, may seem somewhat like a hoary cliché in 2020, but I do remember thinking how refreshing it was to see imperfect, at times thorny yet unconditional love between siblings depicted so genuinely onscreen. (As a gay younger brother of sisters myself, that might’ve played into it, I’ll admit.)
There is a side note, will-they-or-won’t-they romantic subplot between Claudia and Tommy’s tag-along friend (Dylan McDermott), but most of Home for the Holidays lives or dies based on the interpersonal family dynamics that are as cringingly relatable as they are a bittersweet joy to watch. There are the requisite dinner table dustups and dramatic humiliations, interspersed with quieter moments and sidebar conversations, often shared between two characters, unpacking their personal or shared history. Anecdotes are exchanged casually, seemingly at random, but have threads that get revealed only toward the end. A long holiday weekend flies by (i.e. good pacing), and before you know it the Larson family once again parts ways, melancholically.
Can we briefly talk about Jodie Foster, the director?
Though I still mourn, like any decent cinephile, the nonexistence of the ultimately doomed Flora Plum, what I lament more is her career as a prodigious filmmaker, more or less stopped in its tracks… for decades. From her 1991 directorial debut (Little Man Tate) to her most recently helmed feature (2016’s whiff, Money Monster), Foster, if nothing else, knows how to assemble a fine cast for her projects. That Home for the Holidays remains the apex is curious, but fitting, as it’s really a valentine to dysfunctional families with deep, abiding love for one another—presumably not unlike the family Foster was born into herself.
Hollywood is, as always, a less-than-hospitable place for offbeat, talented filmmakers like Foster (not to mention unconventional actors like Hunter). We may never get the circus family of Flora Plum (whither thou?!), but what we can savor is the coda of this film, which I’d argue even is the magnum opus of Foster’s filmmaking career: three glorious minutes of marvelous vignettes; of tender, largely private moments between principle—and peripheral—characters (including what may have been the first gay marriage ceremony I ever saw onscreen, shown ever so nonchalantly, like love is love is…). It’s a beautiful, poignant grace note, as touching a reminder as any that there are certain memories we all may share as a family unit, as well as ones reserved just for yourself—no cameras, no eyewitnesses. It’s these, life’s most intimate, ephemeral moments, that remain the property of yours alone, to play back in your own mind.
Home for the Holidays is streaming now on Starz.