Writers: Peter Nickowitz and Bill Oliver
Director: Bill Oliver
A Kramer vs. Kramer style parental weepy, Peter Nickowitz and Bill Oliver’s Our Son stars two of the biggest names at this year’s BFI Flare Festival – Luke Evans and Billy Porter – who play a long-married couple facing a custody battle for their 8-year-old son. Both stars give committed and tear-stained performances while the writers explore the complex fallout of a relationships disintegrating, biological and legal claims, and the meaning of being a father as both dads must invariably learn something about themselves along the way.
Gabriel and Nicky have a reasonably comfortable life, Gabriel giving up his career to become the primary parent while Nicky’s publishing business funds a nice home. Gabriel is frustrated by Nicky’s absences and long working hours so has an affair, prompting the end of their marriage and an increasingly bitter custody battle for their son, Owen, both certain that they know what is best for him.
Our Son is overwrought, often even a bit corny in that wholesome American movie idea of what a family is like and the self-sacrifice required to lovingly parent. Nickowitz and Oliver’s dialogue and story management are quire soapy, never truly digging into character behaviour or psychology, not even exploring different kinds of family or fatherly technique – it is clear from Our Son that you’re all in or all out with little in between. It means that big revelations come around, of infidelities and snarky attempts to discredit each other, resulting in fiery arguments and yet another bout of crying, Fighting and crying, fighting and crying, until they wear themselves and us out with it.
Our Son largely finds a balance between both points of view, presumably to ensure that each of the lead actors has audience sympathy. Gabriel (Porter) is initially the more supportive model parent but is then given the affair storyline to temper the sweetness, while Nicky (Evans) is allowed wine nights with his friends to share his feelings with the audience and admit his own failings, but then New York homes with expensively maintained kitchens and eerie levels of cleanliness don’t buy themselves. Arguably, Our Son goes from a bit of griping to nuclear fallout and loathing all too quickly, but the film is only 105-minutes, so Nickowitz and Oliver have to work fairly fast to establish the scenario and then blow it up to get to the point of the film.
Both characters behave in ways that are frustrating and while it is difficult to really see Gabriel and Nicky as a couple, both Porter and Evans give it their best, managing the often-clunky dialogue and trying to expand on their characters’ emotional range, developing them across the film. Arguably, Evans’ Nicky has a more interesting trajectory, but the story works hard to give them equivalent screen time.
In the end though, the viewer ends up like poor little Owen, torn between them and not really sure which way to go. At least Owen gets two fancy bedrooms out of this divorce drama.
Our Son is screening at BFI Flare 2024 from 13-24 March and on digital release from 25 March.
