Igby Goes Down

Aroview: More than meets the eye in this indie New York satire about an over-educated ‘slacker’ experiencing growing pains amid upper middle-class family dysfunction.

Inhabited by a maturing Kieran Culkin, Igby is believably insecure and sceptical - a perpetual college drop-out with a wretched mother (Sarandon) and an institutionalised father (Pullman) who indulges his spare hours dealing drugs, having casual sex, condescending socialites and dropping literary references by the bucket-load.

Though at first as unfocused as its protagonist, the film finds shape unassumingly and manages to disarm its quirky satire and sometimes self-conscious dialogue with character dimension and emotional texture. Those that ‘get it’ will herein find a sophisticated treatise about family, youth, class and expectations that may resonate long after the closing credits. Hal Hartley, eat your heart out?

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