Hugh Jackman in The Son
(Picture: Handout)After successfully adapting his play The Father into a multi-award winning film, Florian Zeller has turned his attention to the third play of his family trilogy, screening at the Venice Film Festival ahead of its November release. The Son deals with the complexities of father-son relationships, as well as the issue of mental illness.
Hugh Jackman stars as Peter, a successful New York lawyer with a young trophy wife, Beth (Vanessa Kirby) and a new-born baby boy Theo. Yet this beautiful happy family contains other members, just as beautiful but much less happy. Peter has a bitter ex-wife Kate (Laura Dern) and a depressed 17-year-old son Nicholas (Zen McGrath), who has been severely damaged by his parents’ divorce and specifically by what he sees as his father’s betrayal of the family. When an exasperated and scared Kate turns to Peter for help, it is up to the disappointing father and his new partner to take over parenting this fragile teen.
