Igby Goes Down

By RUSSELL BAILLIE

(Herald rating: * * * *)

There's something annoying about just about everyone in Igby Goes Down. And that's a big part of its charm - there's a relish behind the performances of its loathsome ensemble which gives this black comedy its big dark spark.

A cousin of sorts to last year's Royal Tenenbaums and the films of Whit Stillman for its depiction of the life of the young and painfully articulate high on New York's social ladder, Igby Goes Down is also a tale of rich kid adolescent rebellion, family dysfunction and murder - or is it?

The first thing we see is the expiry-by-plastic-bag of Mim Slocomb (Sarandon), with her two sons Igby (Culkin) and Oliver (Phillippe) standing by her deathbed.

Debuting director Burr Steers plays the scene for laughs, setting the sardonic arch tone of what follows. Flashing back, we find that the boys' father Jason (Pullman) was a successful man before slipping into crippling schizophrenia, a fate the younger Igby wants to avoid.

He's determined to be expelled from any private school his overbearing mother enrols him into, eventually holing up in the loft of his godfather D.H. Baines (Goldblum) leased to his mistress Rachel (Peet). While drug-addled Rachel is generous with sexual favours, Igby finds a more meaningful relationship with Jewish American princess Sookie Saperstein (Danes), until, that is, the older Oliver and his Young Republican manners create a problem.

Its script of searing sarcasm does tend toward the showy, and you can wonder how come the sporadically educated Igby got so darn articulate along the way. There are times it seems as if the verbal fencing matches become the film rather than help to tell its story.

But by the time we've come back to that deathbed, Igby - and especially the lead performance of Culkin - emerges as an offbeat coming-of-age film of surprising emotional punch.

Cast: Kieran Culkin, Susan Sarandon, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Claire Danes, Ryan Phillippe Director: Burr Steers Rating: R16 (violence, offensive language, sex scenes) Running time: 98 mins Screening: Rialto from Thursday