Disorder And Early Sorrow

TITLE: OLIVIER OLIVIER

DIRECTOR and WRITER: AGNIESZKA HOLLAND

THE BOTTOM LINE: A bleak film offers a discomfiting vision of family values.

Tragedy cures dysfunction. So made-for-TV movies teach us. Death and disease, addiction, abuse and abduction -- shattering though these may be at first, all eventually cause fictional (or, more likely, fictionalized) families to draw closer together, to discover new strengths in the final reel's final analysis.

Agnieszka Holland, the Polish woman who made Olivier Olivier in France, has obviously not seen a lot of American TV. So she is free to imagine the force of domestic disaster as centrifugal, not...

Want the full story?

Subscribe Now

Subscribe
Subscribe

Learn more about the benefits of being a TIME subscriber

If you are already a subscriber sign up — registration is free!