Igby Goes Down

A film set in New York. Igby is seventeen and has been thrown out of school. It is not the first time; he has tried several and stayed at none. His family is wealthy. His mother is controlling and constantly ill; his father collapsed years ago and is in hospital; his older brother is orderly, successful and looks down on him. He is sent to a military academy. He runs from it. In New York he stays for a while around a man treated as his godfather. The man has a business, a wife and a mistress in the city; Igby moves into her empty apartment. From there the film is about drifting: attempts at work, the people he meets, young people from the art world, and choices that keep narrowing. What the narrative is interested in is not rebellion but inheritance: Igby hates his family and cannot live without their money, and that contradiction makes the whole character. The second matter is his father's illness. Igby is afraid the same thing will happen to him, and never says so directly. Kieran Culkin plays Igby, Susan Sarandon his mother and Jeff Goldblum the godfather. Claire Danes, Ryan Phillippe, Amanda Peet and Bill Pullman are in the cast. Burr Steers wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes sharp-tongued family comedy and sardonic stories about adolescence. Who it is not for: anyone looking for sympathy; nearly every character is wounding and the film does not try to fix that.