The Personal is (A)political?

Lisa Cholodenko's new film The Kids Are All Right is about a lesbian couple raising kids. If the previous sentence doesn't shock you, then this film is right up your alley. Cholodenko's partner is Wendy Melvoin, one half of former Prince collaborators Wendy and Lisa. (NYT)

It is a mark of Ms. Cholodenko’s generosity that her characters don’t always act as one might expect, let alone as identity politics dictate. She’s aware that it is “politically incorrect,” as she put it, to show a lesbian character caught up in a torrid heterosexual affair. But, she said, “I see sexuality probably in a more fluid way than many gay and lesbian people.” (Another case in point: The film’s amusing variation on the birds-and-the-bees talk, in which Nic and Jules must explain to their teenage son why his lesbian mothers have a secret stash of gay-male pornography.)

An audience member in Berlin took Ms. Cholodenko to task for being “not radical at all but really square,” she said, since the movie depicts an alternative family even as it affirms the importance of family. But Ms. Cholodenko has a hard time looking at the film in polemical terms. “It’s about what’s organic for the characters and where my heart is,” she said.