When husband and wife decide to split, the only ones who get hurt are the children, and even though Joan and Bernard Berkman are in the center of their nasty divorce, their two sons -- Frank and Walt -- are the ones going through the trauma. Noah Baumbach wrote and directed this insightful, biting story of a family deadlocked in its inner battles based on his own life experiences and the result is bittersweet.<br /><br />Bernard claims to have been an influential author of novels who has fallen on hard times. Frank idolizes him and has the same clipped, insolent tones as if he were talking to an admiring audience. Bernard openly attacks his wife Joan as if it were a requisite for their marriage to exist and Frank decides he too can't stand her. On the other hand, Joan, once Bernard casually reveals her affair with a neighbor, is coming into her own as a writer and as selfish as she may seem at times, she's the better person in the marriage. Walt, the youngest son, tilts towards her but is going through his own inner changes and is expressing it through masturbation -- especially on library books and his mother's lingerie.<br /><br />After the Berkman's separate, Bernard and the boys move into the new house -- a rickety place within the vicinity -- and Joan initiates her life with Ivan, Walt's tennis tutor. A quadrangle and a triangle of sorts develops when Bernard rents a room to one of his female students, Lili, and begins a tentative affair with her. Frank, who is going out with a girl he seems embarrassed to be seen with, also pines and almost succeeds in seducing Lili. His father even encourages it. Events involving Bernard's and Joan's war eventually lead to a nasty head which will make Frank take a decision about himself.<br /><br />What makes THE SQUID AND THE WHALE such a great little film is how natural it seems at all turns and how slice of life it is. I kept getting references from French New Wave all over the place. Baumbach writes his characters like real people at all times. Bernard's relationship with his sons is real. Look at when he and Walt curse over losing a table tennis match in almost exact verbal intonations, or when both he and Frank lock themselves in their elitist world and chatter about Kafka, how Bernard has decided he was once a brilliant writer which may or not be true, and how "A Tale of Two Cities" was a lesser Dickens as if reading it meant getting an eye infection. Frank, in imitating his father's worst traits, when it is discovered that a song he'd written was in fact a song by Pink Floyd and in a Ted Bundy style argues that "it was as if he had written it so it was his by appropriation" exposes him for the empty snob he is on the inside. Joan, while a little unsympathetic here and there, is a real human and one who maintains her composure when its clear her writing career is on the rise even if her family is about to implode. When she propitiates the demise of her family it's at first seen as an act of selfish abandonment, but one look at Bernard and his abrasive, self-obsessed, hurtful personality and all is explained. Now, Walt has a more internal character development despite some verbal outbursts at the beginning of the movie. Once the family is divided and he is left increasingly alone, his psyche begins delving into his own sexual awakening which under the detached music of Tangerine Dream is seen as something he himself doesn't understand. It's clear he's more tolerant of the two brothers and able to accept Ivan -- an much better guy as his mother's new guy.<br /><br />There's also an interesting subtext involving the film BLUE VELVET that may or nor may be intentional. While Frank invites his father to see SHORT CIRCUIT, his father arrogantly puts that film down (for being commercial) and decides they will see BLUE VELVET. The climactic scene where the main characters converge at the Williams' household seems to open a door to Frank's sexual fascination with brunettes and fuses his progressive revulsion of Sophie, a dead ringer for Laura Dern. The appearance of the dark-haired Lili increases this -- she holds within a similar mystique that lures Frank and leads him to push Sophie away in a painful scene.<br /><br />THE SQUID AND THE WHALE is a sharp domestic drama about bitter people caught within their own patterns of behavior and it lingers on after its abrupt but symbolic ending. Even with Walt's forays into bizarre behavior, which is not as disturbing as a part of a boy's growth, it's Frank -- Noah Baumbach's apparent alter-ego -- who has the moment of clarity to see things as they really are and not be a figment of his father's poison. The moment he realizes he has been a pawn in a needless war between Bernard and Bernard -- not Bernard and Joan as initially depicted, he does what anyone would have done: run and let his feet and instinct take him to the truth.<br /><br />And as is the case with these kinds of movies, all of the performances are on-target. Laura Linney continues on her winning streak of textured, modern women. Jeff Daniels made me feel like I was in the presence of a real jerk who could have a moment of sympathy but chose to remain locked in his delusions, and that takes guts. Ditto of Jesse Eisenberg who at times reminded me of Ted Bundy. Anna Paquin and William Baldwin fill out believable people with their minimal scenes and Owen Kline made me think of an adult trapped in a kid's body. Overall, this is a near-perfect film from start to finish.