FAMILY PORTRAITS - A TRILOGY OF AMERICA (2003)
Label: Severin Films
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: Unrated
Duration: 104 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-MD MA Mono with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (1.66:1)
Director: Douglas Buck
Cast: Jared Barsky, Gary Betsworth, Ray Bland, Sally Conway, Jayne Deely, Larry Fessenden, Nica Ray
Director Douglas Buck is not someone that I was keenly aware of, in fact I only know about him because he directed "The Accident" segment of the anthology film The Theatre Bizarre (2011), which seems to be the last time he directed. Family Portraits - A Trilogy of America is an anthology itself, a collection of the three of Buck's short films - Cutting Moments (1997), Home (1998) and Prologue (2003), which he cut together to make a feature length film.
The film kicks-off with perhaps the most infamous of the three segments, "Cutting Moments" wherein a suburban wife Sarah (Nica Ray) discovers that her cold, unaffectionate husband Patrick (Gary Betsworth) has been molesting their adolescent son. The subject matter is soul-crushing and the way that Buck manages to harness the anguish that lies hidden away beneath the ideal suburban veneer is potent stuff. Ray is quite good as the quietly suffering wife who goes off the deep end in her effort to protect her son. This is the most gruesome of the trilogy with some creative and disturbing gore there at the end that is rather gobsmacking.
Next up is "Home", another take of suburban life and the evil that lurks beneath the surface, this time from the perspective of the husband, a guy named Gary (Gary Betsworth, again). Through flashbacks we see how was mentally scarred from a young age, abused by his domineering father, he ends resorting to physically harming himself to cope with the anguish. Now an adult his wife and daughter are victims to the same vicious cycle of domination. Things begin to turn for the worse when Gary spies his daughter innocently interacting with neighborhood boy, with similar bloody and disturbing results.
The final part of this unsettling trilogy is "Prologue", in it a teenage girl named Billy (Sally Conway) returns home after recovering from a brutal attack that left her without hands and confined to a wheelchair. At the same time there is a parallel story of an older man and his wife who are distanced from each other, they seem to be grieving the loss of their daughter, but few words are spoken between them. The man spends most of his time in his art studio in the barn behind the house, where she is not allowed enter. Meanwhile the teenager begins to remember certain things about the still unsolved crime, her memories now being triggered by her return home. She begins to piece together the identity of the culprit, and thus the two parallel stories come together is a soul-crushing sort of way that also has a bit of light at the end of the tunnel. The film is not as bloody as either of the other entries but the psychological weight of it is much greater, it's a better made film. It's the sort of disturbing small town murder mystery that hits close to home for me, when I was twelve years old a young woman named Kristin O'Connell was murdered in my hometown of Ovid, New York, the crime is still unsolved and haunts me to this day. I have since been drawn to small town unsolved murder mysteries like The Lady in White (1988) and David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) ever since, and this short hits that bittersweet spot for me.
Douglas Buck has an uncanny way of getting under the skin of the the viewer with his sordid tales of both small town and suburban life, he does so with a sparse style that peels away the shiny veneer to expose the rotten underside. It's a shame he has not gone on to do more, but after watching this I dug a little deeper and discovered he also directed a remake of Brian De Palma's Sisters (19723) in 2006 starring Chloë Sevigny (Buffalo 66) and Stephen Rea (V For Vendetta), which has me intrigued to seek it out, it is not streaming anywhere that I could find and is only available on DVD.
Audio/Video: Family Portraits: A Trilogy of America arrives on region-free Blu-ray from Severin Films framed in 1.66:1 widescreen in 1080p HD. This is advertised as a new 2K scan from the original camera negative, and the source does show some mild print damage throughout by way of white specking, some fading and nicks, but nothing too too distracting. The three shorts that comprise this anthology were shot separately om film over a span of six years but they appear remarkably uniform. The biggest difference being the third film "Prologue" is the best shot one, the technical composition has matured. Audio comes by way of English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Mono with optional English subtitles. The mono audio is not remarkable but is serviceable, mostly clean and free of distortion, anddialogue is never hard to decipher.
Extras kick-off with a pair of audio commentaries, the first from
director Douglass Buck recorded in 2019 and a second with Maitland McDonagh recorded in 2020. I have not seen nor heard McDonagh on an extra for what seems like ages, she was a staple on the Argento films when they arrived on DVD the first time around, and it was great to see her on here, giving a detailed and very scene specific break down of the film, getting into the chilling psychological and sexual undercurrents of the films.
You can also watch the film broken out into their original short form, and while it is not advertised on the sleeve each of these shorts can be watched with a different commentary for each film. Actors Nica Ray and Gary Betsworth do a commentary
for "Cutting Moments", while Betsworth goes solo on "Home", and "Prologue" gets a commentary with actors Sally Conway, William Stone Mahoney, David Thornton, Larry Fessenden, Beth Jensen and painter Jesse McCloskey. Additionally we get one of Buck's early short films, the sixteen-minute "After All" from 1994, a black and white film that tells the tale of a young kid who gets his kicks watching nature docs to see animals attacking one another with a text blurb from it about the director.
We also get forty-eight minutes of interviews from the Cutting Moments crew from 1998 sourced from VHS tape, with director Douglas Buck, actress Nica Ray, actor Gary Betsworth, special effects guy Tom Vukmanic, and composer William Demartino. Tom Savini even shows up to give an appreciation for the film. I thought it was cool to find out that Buck was originally to make "Cutting Moments" after repeated listens to the PJ Harvey tune "Run It Till It Bleeds".
There's also three episodes of the That's Dark Podcast from 2018 and 2019 that run about two hours, offering both a 2-part dissection of the film and an interview with director. We also get a16-minute behind-the-scene video for "Prologue" as well as a brief 1-minute deleted scene. Th disc is buttoned-up with 2-minute trailer and image galleries that offer stills, behind-the-scene images, promotional images and home video releases.
Special Features:
- Audio Commentary with Director Douglas Buck
- Audio Commentary with Maitland McDonagh
- Cutting Moments(1997) - Short Film (26 min) with optional commentary from Writer Douglas Winter
- Home (1998) - Short Film (9 min) with optional commentary from film professor John Freitas
- Prologue (2003) - Short Film (52 min) with optional commentary from film professor Marc Lapadula
- After All (1994) - Short Film (16 min)
- Cutting Moments Interviews, Circa 1998 (48 min)
- That’s Dark – Podcast on Cutting Moments & Interview with Director Douglas Buck (124 min)
- Deleted Scene – Prologue (1 min)
- Behind the Scenes – Prologue (16 min)
- Stills Galleries (7 min)
- Trailer (2 min)
- After All (1994) - Short Film (16 min)
- Cutting Moments Interviews, Circa 1998 (48 min)
- That’s Dark – Podcast on Cutting Moments & Interview with Director Douglas Buck (124 min)
- Deleted Scene – Prologue (1 min)
- Behind the Scenes – Prologue (16 min)
- Stills Galleries (7 min)
- Trailer (2 min)
Family Portraits - A Trilogy of America (2003) is a deeply unsettling watch that gets unfder the skin, director Douglass Buck has a disturbing knack for depicting the darker side of the American family and what goes on beyond the white picket fences and well-manicured lawns, much the same way that both David Lynch (Blue Velvet) and Todd Solondz (Happiness) have managed to do. If you like to be punched in the gut by a movie this is one you should check out, the new Blu-ray from Severin Films offers plenty of extras for those wanting to dig a little deeper into these harrowing tales of Americana.
More screenshots from the Blu-ray:
