Movie review: August: Osage County

August: Osage County is very much about the dialogue and the acting

Want to feel good about yourself? Step into the world of the Weston family and you are bound to.

August: Osage County tells the story of a family of strong-willed women who are drawn back to the family home in the United States Midwest by the disappearance, then death of the family patriarch.

And it draws on a star-studded cast to deliver many impressive performances: Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Chris Cooper, Juliette Lewis and Benedict Cumberbatch are superb practitioners of their art and they don't let us down.

Violet Weston (Streep) is the dysfunctional matriarch of the family and uses a diet of pills and cigarettes to fight a bout of mouth cancer.

She lives a largely separate life from husband Beverly (Sam Shepard) but when he disappears, then is discovered to have committed suicide, the family returns to support their mother.

The arrival of Violet's three daughters and her sister, and their families, soon exposes regrets and recriminations from the dysfunctional lives they fled many years earlier.

Violet is far from the model mother, and anger and arguments dominate memories of the children's early years.

Eldest daughter Barbara (Julia Roberts) has her own problems in her married life and the journey home is not one she wants to make. But she knows her role in the family and the need to look out for her mother.

The death of Beverly serves to open many barely covered wounds that have festered for many years.

There are secrets that some know and that others are affected by.

What is true to say is that no one will leave this family gathering in the same mental space in which they arrived.

August: Osage Country is very much about the dialogue and the acting.

It is about people and emotions and skeletons that have been neatly hidden in the closet ... until now.

Watch the trailer here:

August: Osage County (M) 135 minutes
3 stars