Sundance, day two: My first movie

You know a Sundance movie when it happens to you: the navel-gazing, that jaunty, slightly whimsical music, the unmitigated angst of a certain class. Tamara Jenkins takes a few choice moments in her impressive sibling drama “The Savages” to put both her vaguely mature characters and her movie in check. This was my inaugural movie and I was wary of the Sundance-ness of it all – the squabbling brother and sister, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney playing them, a score from Stephen Trask.

But Jenkins, whose movie concerns children's unconditional devotion to an elderly parent, comes up with a number of smartly and sensitively written scenes. My favorite of them involves a screening of “The Jazz Singer” on movie night at a home for the elderly and the mortification that seizes Linney and Hoffman as they hear the disgruntled mumbling of the equally with-it black people in the crowd watching Al Jolson slather his face in shoe polish. Jenkins milks the scene for all its comedy, but -- unlike so many movies this festival has showcased over the years, dealing with white/non-white relationships -- the guilt makes complete sense.