Film Review: The Kids Are All Right

Haru ONO
Website administrator, Rainbow Family
http://queerfamily.jimdo.com/

【The article below is the same as the article that appears in the fourteenth issue of the CGS Newsletter.】

(Still of The Kids Are Alright ©2010 TKA Alright, LLC All Rights Reserved)

　I am a lesbian mother raising three children with my female partner. I have been given the opportunity to write a review of the film The Kids Are All Right from my perspective as an LGBT. For those who have not seen this film already, it is about two children who were born to a lesbian couple (Julianne Moore and Annette Bening) by articial insemination. Problems start when these children, now coming of age, contact their biological father. My initial reaction when I saw the lm was that it was quite dierent from its advertisements, which had given me the impression that it was a family comedy set in Southern California.
　I must first commend the acting in the film, especially by the two main actors. But in this review I will focus on the sense of incongruity I felt while watching the lm, which I believe reects the current state of LGBT families in Japan. (You may not know this, but there are quite a few LGBT families in this country!)
　The first thing that felt rather odd to me was how the film portrayed the family of a lesbian couple (like my own) as being no different from that of a heterosexual couple. This is probably due to the director Lisa Cholodenko's own background: She is a lesbian herself, and actually gave birth to a child through artificial insemination while shooting the lm. So I believe that the lm was targeted more for non-LGBTs rather than the LGBT community. In fact, many heterosexuals empathized with the lm and felt that it was about a universal familial love. The film strongly conveys the director's message that all families are basically the same, regardless of the parents' sexuality. This relates back to the title of the lm, The Kids Are All Right. My own situation is slightly different from the lm as my children are from an earlier heterosexual marriage and not conceived through artificial insemination, and I have never felt discriminated against for raising them with my lesbian partner. However, the situation for LGBT couples in Japan is still dicult. If you say you have children, you will almost certainly be asked whether the children are "all right."
　The difference between the situation for LGBT families in Japan and in the US is another factor that contributed to my feeling of incongruity. In the US, artificial insemination by lesbians became quite common twenty years ago. Those children have now come of age, and a new generation is replacing the old. On the other hand, lesbian pregnancies have only recently started in Japan. Artificial insemination by unmarried couples is not officially recognized in Japan, so they have no choice but to do so by unofficial means. Nevertheless there are many Japanese lesbians who want children, and are paving the way for others. At such an early stage, what we need to see is not a picture of what may happen in twenty years' time, but hope for us to move forward. In this sense, the lm was a little too "real." I will not give away any details, but the lm drives home the reality of everyday life rather than depicting a happily-ever-after ending. I would probably have had a different reaction to the film if lesbian pregnancies were more common in Japan.
　In the end, however, my reactions to the film all stem from a (new-found) sense of hope. So for now, I would just like to rejoice in the knowledge that such a lm has been released!