Main Image: 

Published: 01 July 2010
by DAN CARRIER

LYME Disease is a rather unpleasant illness that is passed to humans through tick bites. Judging by the behaviour of one of the main protaganists in this haunting film, it is not something you can shake off too easily.

Its horrendously debilitating effects work as a weird metaphor for the pain of familial relationships that becomes more apparent as the drama unfolds. 

Director Derick Martini has used this oddly little-known illness – apparently it’s the most regularly contracted tick-borne disease in the northern hemisphere – to suggest that while the new suburban homes that create a backdrop for the story should be idyllic with their clapboard fronts and large lawns, they instead feel threatening. It is a theme that returns time and again in this brilliantly observed movie.

The story begins through the eyes of adolescent Scott (Rory Culkin), who inhabits the autumnal world of a Long Island teenager – bullied at school, with a mum who drinks and a father who cares for little but his real estate business and does not understand that there is more to be being a husband than putting a roof over their heads and food on the table. 

Scott’s interests focus partly on his Star Wars toys – this is a boy on the cusp of becoming a full-blooded teen – and then the beautiful girl, Adrianna (Emma Roberts), who lives in the house next door.

While the homes are large and detached and smell of freshly made money, both households are far from safe havens. Adrianna’s mum Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), who works with Scott’s father selling real estate plots for the dream homes, is deeply unsatisfied, and well she might be: her husband Charlie suffers from Lyme’s. He mopes about all day, dreaming of shooting the deers that roam through the woods at the bottom of his garden, while pretending to his wife he is heading into town each day to find a new job.

The return on leave from the army of Scott’s brother Jimmy (Kieran Culkin) brings a brief respite to Scott as the bullies have someone their own size to handle, and it brings brief joy into his mother’s life. Jimmy even stands up to his dad – something the cowered Scott would never dream of doing. 

Produced by Martin Scorsese and Alec Baldwin, the sheer quality of the setting, the pace and the rendering of the tale shines through. Add to this the fact that director Martini and his brother Steven, who helped with the screenplay, say it is based on their own lives, and its realism is even more chilling. 

The sense of infidelity, of families falling to pieces by the selfish actions of parents, of how children coming of age begin to understand their fathers and mothers are fallible after all, comes through superbly. It has a brilliant finish and while it takes time to really get going, the pace is crucial. 

This is heavy going but it is meant to be – not a cheerful offering, but a clever and moving look at what makes people happy.