'Home' far from conventional

By Steven Rea
Knight Ridder Newspapers

A HOME AT THE END OF THE WORLD Produced by Tom Hulce, Christine Vachon, Katie Roumel, Pamela Koffler, John Wells, John N. Hart Jr., Jeffrey Sharp, directed by Michael Mayer, written by Michael Cunningham, photography by Enrique Chediak, music by Duncan Sheik, distributed by Warner Independent Pictures. Running time: 1 hour, 33 mins. Parent's guide: R (sex, drugs, profanity, adult themes)

Adapted from Michael Cunningham's 1990 novel, "A Home At the End of the World" is a decades-spanning melodrama about friendship and family and how one begets the other. It is a tale of hippiedom and heartbreak, of psychedelics and soul-searching, of gay love and a meaningful bisexual "menage a trios" accompanied by laughter, tears and the plaintive refrains of Bob Dylan (bootlegged), Leonard Cohen and Laura Nyro.

A first film by theater director Michael Mayer, "Home" stars Colin Farrell and Dallas Roberts as best buddies — brothers, practically, who lived together since adolescence. Bobby (Farrell) was a sensitive kid who lost his parents and his older brother and then moved in with Jonathan's family. Jonathan's mother, Alice (Sissy Spacek), took Bobby in as one of her own. As kids, they experimented with drugs, and with each other. (Two boys and two teenagers play Bobby and Jonathan in these early episodes).

Now in their 20s, in the early 1980s, the two meet up again in New York. Jonathan, out of the closet, shares a funky East Village walk-up with the kooky and somewhat older Clare (Robin Wright Penn), a woman with wild red and blue hair and a penchant for saying what's on her mind.

Disillusioned with his life in Ohio, adrift, and with a questionable haircut of his own (Farrell's mop-top wig is like a joke from a Farrelly Brothers movie), Bobby, a sort of emotionally arrested man-child, shows up at Jonathan and Clare's front door. They take him in, and everybody falls in love with everybody else.

This, of course, gets complicated.

In addition to the good times, to the bed-hopping and dancing and trips to the movies ("All About Eve"), there are bad times, too. Jealousy rears its head. Tensions ensue. But the bond between the three is strong, and when Clare gets pregnant, this odd, makeshift family becomes even stronger.

Farrell, who's been steely and fiery in most of his mainstream Hollywood pics, shows a quieter, vulnerable side here, and Roberts, in his first substantial film role, brings intelligence and humor to the part of Jonathan. When small bruises start appearing on Jonathan's body, the dread is palpable: AIDS stakes its claim on the character, just as it did in Cunningham's "The Hours." It also stakes its claim on the future of "A Home at the End of the World's" steadfast threesome.

The beautiful Wright Penn has a harder time anchoring the free-spirited Clare in territory that feels honest and true — there's a stagey quality to the actress' performance that goes beyond the stagey quality of her character. Spacek, on the other hand, embues the straight-laced Midwestern housewife and mother Alice with a soft, simple grace. Alice embraces the unconventional relationship between Clare, Jonathan and her son with a full heart.

There is joy in "A Home at the End of the World," there is sorrow, there are spiffy period clothes and coifs, and there are achingly cute, and agonizingly precious lines. It's a "big, beautiful, noisy world" out there, and Bobby, Jonathan and Clare aren't about to let us forget it.