This a much leaner film in terms of narrative incident than In the Family, though it paves the way for Patrick Wang to step into new artistic terrain.
The film veers toward half-hearted, sentimental drama that seems purely obligatory to its seasonal milieu.
Sofia Coppola serves up a cautionary revenge tale told from multiple perspectives, and thus none at all.
The film’s default mode is to lazily skewer suburbanites as cartoonishly privileged yuppies.
It abandons its subtlety en route to becoming a moralistic screed about the preservation of the nuclear family.
It’s flatly fascinated by Lamb’s pathology without trying to understand its formation from environmental factors.