The Ice Storm (1997)

.”…a family is like your own personal anti-matter. Your family is the void you emerge from and the place where you return to when you die. And that’s the paradox. The closer you’re drawn back in, the deeper into the void you go.”
Over the Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, a Connecticut family slides into moral deterioration.

Benjamin Hood (Kevin Kline) drowns his troubles at work with too much booze and an affair with a family friend, Janey (Sigourney Weaver). His wife Elena (Joan Allen), sick of his lies and affair, pumps herself full of pop self-help books but her own moral code is tested when the couple attends a “key party” with many of their friends.

Their son Paul (Tobey Maguire) is home from his high school prep boarding school but goes back into NYC to pursue a teenage girl (Katie Holmes). Their younger daughter Wendy (Christina Ricci) is experimenting with liquor and teasing Janey’s teenage son Mike (Elijah Woods) while recklessly pursuing Mike’s little brother Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd).

I question why the couple would go out in the middle of a pretty intense ice storm to a party and tell Paul to take a cab home from the train station late at night because the roads will be dangerous with the ice. But that’s the way the story went.

When a terrible tragedy hits, the family is jolted into reality and struggle to figure out what’s really important in life.

Jamey Sheridan appears as Janey’s husband. Henry Czerny also appears.

Directed by Ang Lee.

Run time: 1 hour, 52 minutes

Rated R for sexuality and drug use, including scenes involving children, and for language.

My personal rating: C