Described in one publicity tag as "a dark comedy," I am not sure whether Derek Martini's intense little film lives up to that description. Set in Long Island, it focuses on a teenage protagonist Scott (Rory Culkin), who not only learns something about his family, but acquires new knowledge about those closest to him, especially his childhood friend Adrianna (Emma Roberts), whom he has known ever since he was eight years old.
Lyme's Disease is transmitted to human beings through infected blacklegged ticks. Typical symptoms include fever, headaches and skin rash. In Martini's film the disease functions as a kind of metaphor for the disease affecting everyone around Scott; his father Mickey (Alec Baldwin) conducts a clandestine affair with Adrianna's mother Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), while his mother appears not to notice; his brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) has gone off to military service as a means of escaping from his father; while Adrianna appears to be going out with older boys at his high school. In this capitalist-oriented, meritocratic world, where Mickey believes that becoming a millionaire is a sign of 'success,' no one appears particularly interested in anyone around them.
Melissa's husband Charlie (Timothy Hutton) actually suffers from the disease, but nonetheless lives a life as false as anyone else's. While pretending to go to the city each day to find a job, he actually incarcerates himself away in the bowels of his home doing drawings.
Set in the late Seventies, LYMELIFE offers an interesting critique of American lifestyles at that time; the obsession with money, masculinity and self-assertion that creates an alienated world. There are some highly suggestive groupings: Scott and Adrianna are shown standing on either side of a railway line; they cannot seem to cross the line to meet together, but instead wait for a train to come past, remarking as they do so that it's always possible to hear a train anywhere in Long Island. At the end of the film, they are shown sitting together in a school bus; they do not speak for a long time, until Adrianna relents and takes Scott's hand. At least the youngsters are making tentative steps to create a less alienating world.
Sometimes the film makes use of rather obvious symbolism to prove its point: a family row is accompanied by the sound of Sinatra singing a love-song on the soundtrack; while there are several point of view shots of Charlie looking out through a barred upper window at an (imaginary) deer grazing immediately in front of his house. Yet the action as a whole is redeemed by two strong central characterizations: Rory Culkin is especially good as the teenager pretending to be a strongman as he stands in front of the mirror, while Roberts proves herself to be a fundamentally generous soul in a sequence immediately following Scott's confirmation ceremony, when she swallows her pride and agrees to be his friend once more.
Lyme's Disease is transmitted to human beings through infected blacklegged ticks. Typical symptoms include fever, headaches and skin rash. In Martini's film the disease functions as a kind of metaphor for the disease affecting everyone around Scott; his father Mickey (Alec Baldwin) conducts a clandestine affair with Adrianna's mother Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), while his mother appears not to notice; his brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) has gone off to military service as a means of escaping from his father; while Adrianna appears to be going out with older boys at his high school. In this capitalist-oriented, meritocratic world, where Mickey believes that becoming a millionaire is a sign of 'success,' no one appears particularly interested in anyone around them.
Melissa's husband Charlie (Timothy Hutton) actually suffers from the disease, but nonetheless lives a life as false as anyone else's. While pretending to go to the city each day to find a job, he actually incarcerates himself away in the bowels of his home doing drawings.
Set in the late Seventies, LYMELIFE offers an interesting critique of American lifestyles at that time; the obsession with money, masculinity and self-assertion that creates an alienated world. There are some highly suggestive groupings: Scott and Adrianna are shown standing on either side of a railway line; they cannot seem to cross the line to meet together, but instead wait for a train to come past, remarking as they do so that it's always possible to hear a train anywhere in Long Island. At the end of the film, they are shown sitting together in a school bus; they do not speak for a long time, until Adrianna relents and takes Scott's hand. At least the youngsters are making tentative steps to create a less alienating world.
Sometimes the film makes use of rather obvious symbolism to prove its point: a family row is accompanied by the sound of Sinatra singing a love-song on the soundtrack; while there are several point of view shots of Charlie looking out through a barred upper window at an (imaginary) deer grazing immediately in front of his house. Yet the action as a whole is redeemed by two strong central characterizations: Rory Culkin is especially good as the teenager pretending to be a strongman as he stands in front of the mirror, while Roberts proves herself to be a fundamentally generous soul in a sequence immediately following Scott's confirmation ceremony, when she swallows her pride and agrees to be his friend once more.