Anders may have quit the rat race, but he can’t seem to stay away from the track. He goes to parties where he runs into Helene, and pursues awkward conversations with old friends who are less than delighted to be in his company. Helene has moved on to a new man (Bill Camp), which bothers Anders more than he would like to admit. He tries to maintain a semblance of paternal authority with his drifting, post-collegiate son, Preston (Thomas Mann), and indulges in some desperate adolescent behavior with another young man, Charlie (Charlie Tahan), who takes a lot of drugs. Since this is not “American Beauty,” Anders’s privileged turmoil doesn’t become a gaseous metaphor for a filmmaker’s half-baked sociological insights.

Source: New York Times September 13, 2018 13:49 UTC