Bravely shows that depressed people can be quite annoying: The Son reviewed

For my money – and lots of other people’s – Florian Zeller’s 2020 film The Father was pretty much a masterpiece. Oscar-winningly adapted from his own play by Zeller and Christopher Hampton, it plunged us into the fractured world of Anthony, an old man with dementia (as Oscar-winningly played by Anthony Hopkins). With different actors playing the same characters and perfectly coherent scenes that kept contradicting each other, we shared Anthony’s struggle to work out who was who and what was what. The result provided a rare combination of tricksy intelligence and emotional punch.

Now, with The Son, adapted with Hampton from another of his plays, Zeller brings us another domestic catastrophe. This time, though, he tells it so straightforwardly that the film unmistakably resembles an old-school well-made play – and a slightly creaky one at that.

Hugh Jackman plays Peter Miller, whose status as a high-flying New York lawyer is immediately established by him saying ‘Hey Jessica, can you send me the Jackson file?’ into his phone.