Let’s start with the casting, since it's the flashiest thing about Sam & Kate by twenty miles or so. This multigenerational romance stars two pairs of parent-child actors, the first Dustin Hoffman and son Jake Hoffman, the second Sissy Spacek and her daughter Schuyler Fisk. A cast like this raises the question: Do the young, unfamous actors acquit themselves opposite their parents? The answer is “yes.” Now that that’s out of the way, we can discuss the movie on its own merits.
I’m being glib, but I was genuinely surprised to find how little I cared about the actors’ real-world relationships while I watched Sam & Kate. Presumably, this would have been different if the movie resembled reality in any way—if it were about two fictional famous people’s relationships with their children, say. But as it is, since the characters are everyday people in a smallish town that screams "middle America," there’s not much invitation to consider Spacek’s actual relationship with Fisk, or that of the two Hoffman men. The parent-child scenes do have a cozy, lived-in intimacy, and a number of shots invite you to marvel at how much the younger actors resemble their parents, but there’s very little here that a good casting director couldn’t invoke with talented and unrelated actors.
So, what are those actors up to, exactly? Dustin Hoffman plays Bill, an aging grump and veteran in denial about his body falling apart. His son Sam (Jake Hoffman), a talented visual artist, has moved back home to take care of him, a fact that the brusque Bill ignores. One day, Sam catches sight of the beautiful Kate (Fisk) in a bookshop window, and pursues her despite her lingering hesitancy. Thus do Sam and Bill become intertwined in the lives of Kate and Tina (Spacek), Kate’s mother, a woman who refuses to admit her hoarding problem (and who’s by far the most interesting character onscreen, thanks to the cagey detailing of Spacek’s performance). Bill is drawn to Tina, and sparks fly between both couples, but will either turn into a relationship, and how will the dynamics between parents and children transform?
Sam & Kate, the first movie by writer-director Darren Le Gallo, hits its somewhat modest targets. There’s a bit of everything here: intergenerational friction that stems from changing ideas of masculinity; some characters with surprising pasts and others with uncertain futures; religion as something increasingly decorative to the younger generation but socially connective to the older. The character of Kate, a musician, benefits from Fisk's wonderful voice. There’s some good meat-and-potatoes character writing, too. The older characters are blunter yet more evasive than their younger counterparts. They’re interested in different topics and follow different verbal patterns. The dramatic moments between the characters arise organically.
In terms of craft, nothing here visually stuns—besides Fisk’s thousand-watt smile, maybe—but the movie never touches ugliness, either. It feels sedate by design. Even Tina’s claustrophobic house is shot to evoke empathy rather than disgust: in the kitchen, Kate glances into a dirty mug and quickly switches to a clean one nearby, but we don’t see the contents of the first. We’re never forced to confront the realities of rotting food or clumps of filth; there’s no sensory intrusion. Courtesy of production designer Jack Fisk (Spacek’s husband), the stacks of hoarded objects have neutral, faded colors, inviting us to see them the way Tina does—as background—and as we dip into boxes, Le Gallo ably walks the tightrope of showing Tina’s neurosis without nudging her into caricature.
Much to like, then, but all the best material is heavily backloaded. Both of the Hoffman performances waver in the early going, with Dustin occasionally seeming to work on autopilot and Jake sometimes dipping into a wide-eyed, eager attitude that doesn't read as entirely organic. But then, they're not given too much to work with in those early stages. The first half of the movie meanders, and rarely to places that feel fresh; the only real thrust is Sam eagerly pursuing Kate while she waffles, the territory of countless movies about uncertain young men. The script brings to mind one of Kurt Vonnegut’s writing rules: “Give your reader as much information as possible as soon as possible.” Not universally applicable advice, but Le Gallo could have benefited from withholding a little less here. He knows exactly what his best cards are, and to be fair, playing them late makes for an affecting second half, but the table feels pretty empty for forty-odd minutes.
The main victim of the undramatic first half is the romance. There was never a point when these couples seemed fascinated by each other. Did they feel desire? Did they think about each other any more often, or with any more intensity, than good friends do? For Sam, these feelings are at least demonstrated, albeit in tired ways. For the others, none of this is shown at all, and that’s a real liability. It’s the movie’s saving grace, then, that its success doesn’t ride on an Austenian match of character or apparent romantic passion. Its driving forces are empathy and comfort. However slight, it does leave you feeling a little more of both.
Rioghnach Robinson lives in Chicago, where she spends 70% of her waking hours dissecting the mindsets of fictional characters; the remaining 30% go toward rubbing her palms together in doomed attempts to generate heat. She writes books under the pen name Riley Redgate, most recently Alone Out Here (Disney Hyperion/2022), and she has also written for The Onion, America's finest news source. You can find her on Instagram, Tumblr, Letterboxd, or her website.
I’m being glib, but I was genuinely surprised to find how little I cared about the actors’ real-world relationships while I watched Sam & Kate. Presumably, this would have been different if the movie resembled reality in any way—if it were about two fictional famous people’s relationships with their children, say. But as it is, since the characters are everyday people in a smallish town that screams "middle America," there’s not much invitation to consider Spacek’s actual relationship with Fisk, or that of the two Hoffman men. The parent-child scenes do have a cozy, lived-in intimacy, and a number of shots invite you to marvel at how much the younger actors resemble their parents, but there’s very little here that a good casting director couldn’t invoke with talented and unrelated actors.
So, what are those actors up to, exactly? Dustin Hoffman plays Bill, an aging grump and veteran in denial about his body falling apart. His son Sam (Jake Hoffman), a talented visual artist, has moved back home to take care of him, a fact that the brusque Bill ignores. One day, Sam catches sight of the beautiful Kate (Fisk) in a bookshop window, and pursues her despite her lingering hesitancy. Thus do Sam and Bill become intertwined in the lives of Kate and Tina (Spacek), Kate’s mother, a woman who refuses to admit her hoarding problem (and who’s by far the most interesting character onscreen, thanks to the cagey detailing of Spacek’s performance). Bill is drawn to Tina, and sparks fly between both couples, but will either turn into a relationship, and how will the dynamics between parents and children transform?
Sam & Kate, the first movie by writer-director Darren Le Gallo, hits its somewhat modest targets. There’s a bit of everything here: intergenerational friction that stems from changing ideas of masculinity; some characters with surprising pasts and others with uncertain futures; religion as something increasingly decorative to the younger generation but socially connective to the older. The character of Kate, a musician, benefits from Fisk's wonderful voice. There’s some good meat-and-potatoes character writing, too. The older characters are blunter yet more evasive than their younger counterparts. They’re interested in different topics and follow different verbal patterns. The dramatic moments between the characters arise organically.
In terms of craft, nothing here visually stuns—besides Fisk’s thousand-watt smile, maybe—but the movie never touches ugliness, either. It feels sedate by design. Even Tina’s claustrophobic house is shot to evoke empathy rather than disgust: in the kitchen, Kate glances into a dirty mug and quickly switches to a clean one nearby, but we don’t see the contents of the first. We’re never forced to confront the realities of rotting food or clumps of filth; there’s no sensory intrusion. Courtesy of production designer Jack Fisk (Spacek’s husband), the stacks of hoarded objects have neutral, faded colors, inviting us to see them the way Tina does—as background—and as we dip into boxes, Le Gallo ably walks the tightrope of showing Tina’s neurosis without nudging her into caricature.
Much to like, then, but all the best material is heavily backloaded. Both of the Hoffman performances waver in the early going, with Dustin occasionally seeming to work on autopilot and Jake sometimes dipping into a wide-eyed, eager attitude that doesn't read as entirely organic. But then, they're not given too much to work with in those early stages. The first half of the movie meanders, and rarely to places that feel fresh; the only real thrust is Sam eagerly pursuing Kate while she waffles, the territory of countless movies about uncertain young men. The script brings to mind one of Kurt Vonnegut’s writing rules: “Give your reader as much information as possible as soon as possible.” Not universally applicable advice, but Le Gallo could have benefited from withholding a little less here. He knows exactly what his best cards are, and to be fair, playing them late makes for an affecting second half, but the table feels pretty empty for forty-odd minutes.
The main victim of the undramatic first half is the romance. There was never a point when these couples seemed fascinated by each other. Did they feel desire? Did they think about each other any more often, or with any more intensity, than good friends do? For Sam, these feelings are at least demonstrated, albeit in tired ways. For the others, none of this is shown at all, and that’s a real liability. It’s the movie’s saving grace, then, that its success doesn’t ride on an Austenian match of character or apparent romantic passion. Its driving forces are empathy and comfort. However slight, it does leave you feeling a little more of both.
Rioghnach Robinson lives in Chicago, where she spends 70% of her waking hours dissecting the mindsets of fictional characters; the remaining 30% go toward rubbing her palms together in doomed attempts to generate heat. She writes books under the pen name Riley Redgate, most recently Alone Out Here (Disney Hyperion/2022), and she has also written for The Onion, America's finest news source. You can find her on Instagram, Tumblr, Letterboxd, or her website.
Categories: domestic dramas, love stories
