Life During Wartime

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco: With a title from Talking Heads, Life During Wartime is obsessive filmmaker Todd Solondz's creepy/ beautiful, engrossing/repellent follow-up to his 1998 dystopian family epic Happiness. In fact, the same dystopian family from Happiness is back, played by a new cast. And Solondz pokes at the clan's tender wounds in a kind of where-are-they-now reverie. One update: Pedophile dad (Ciarán Hinds) is out of prison. Another: The drama has moved from New Jersey to Miami, captured in a color-saturated palette that magnifies the heartbreak. The hard things to accept — let alone forgive — about human behavior are still hard. In a staring contest with his audience, Solondz never blinks. He picks and picks at the themes that consume him, and he doesn't care who stays and who leaves. Me, I'm rapt.

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