#18. Junebug (2005) / The Squid and the Whale (2005)

(Junebug director: Phil Morrison; starring Embeth Davidtz, Alessandro Nivola and Amy Adams)

(Squid and the Whale director: Noah Baumbach; starring Jeff Daniels, Laura Linney and Jesse Eisenberg)

The year 2005 produced these two stellar independent family dramas, each taking place in opposite ends of the voting bloc (one in the Deep South, the other in Brooklyn, New York) but both examining the friction, humor, anguish and humanity created by familial bonds. Phil Morrison’s Junebug centers on the creation of these bonds, with the introduction of a cultured Chicago spouse visiting her husband’s Carolina family, one of whom is expecting a baby. Noah Baumbach’s semi- autobiographical Squid and the Whale, on the other hand, trains its lens on the disintegration of said bonds, as an intellectual husband and wife face divorce, and the effects it has on their children who suddenly are forced to live (and eventually decide) between two homes as they struggle to figure out their own identities. Standouts in each film include Junebug’s Amy Adams as the effervescently optimistic mother-to-be (“I wonder what she looks like. I bet she’s skinny. She probably is. She’s skinnier’n me and prettier too. Now I’ll hate her. Oh, I can’t wait!”), and Squid and the Whale’s Jesse Eisenberg as the over-confident yet secretly confused teenage intellectual-to-be. ([In reference to The Metamorphosis] “Yeah, it’s very Kafkaesque.” Cause it’s written by Franz Kafka. “Right. I mean, clearly.”)

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