keelygirl2
The grandmother is just the worst. For reasons that are not totally revealed, she jettisons her kids when they are very young and temporarily reclaims them later. She is a total narcissist- and it is bewildering that the universe would allow one who had acted so egregiously to "suck air" for over 90 years. I felt terrible for her grown sons, who decades later are still trying to bravely face the trauma visited on them by their beastly mother. She claims to have been "too young" to face raising children....ok, she then fails to acknowledge that her kindergarten age children were also "too young" to face life without a parent. Caught up in her own self absorbed delusions, Marianne escapes all accountability for a lifetime of grief that she caused her family. The single saving grace of the movie was that the near criminal behavior of the grandmother seems to bring together the surviving males in the family. It is a compelling story but takes a long time to unfold and is never fully explained.
Lionpride505
Don't be fooled by the intriguing premise and the 7.3 rating of this documentary, because you will honestly be disappointed in the end. This documentary strings viewers along believing there are answers to this "family mystery," when in reality it's just a grandson following around his disturbed and incest-driven grandmother whom is hardly interesting. The cast is one dimensional and there is never any clue about the big "mystery" that led to this family's dysfunction. IMO, this is just a bunch of spoiled, upper class, and selfish individuals who tried to be part of an amateur documentary for attention. There are far more interesting documentaries on family tragedy; this one feels unfinished and uninspired.
Lucas Versantvoort
Tom Fassaert, photographer and documentary maker, one day receives an invitation from his 95 year-old grandmother who lives in South Africa. All he knows about her are the misery-filled tales told by his father, her son. Tom visits her and films all their conversations. The result is a mind-boggling portrait of this family and its many ills.A Family Affair becomes a meditation on childhood trauma's and how these are carried by its victims their entire lives unless both parties are willing to get together and have a sit-down. Usually, however, the things that need to be said remain unsaid. The tragedy here, which Fassaert shows with utmost clarity, is that Marianne is just unable to do so due to how self-absorbed and narcissistic she is. This is a woman who, being a single mom, put her three year-old sons in an orphanage for (if I remember correctly) the sake of her fashion career, but when told that this was a traumatic experience for them, can't even begin to understand how such an experience might be traumatic. This is someone who when meeting her oldest son (Fassaert's uncle), who ended up in a psychiatric institute in his teens due to his toxic relationship with her, for the first time in years can only seem to speak of her fancy house and backyard back in South Africa. This is someone who falls in love with Fassaert, her grandson mind you, and has to be told by an acquaintance that such a thing could never be before she seems to accept this. This is someone who is unable to, or perhaps emotionally can't afford to, accept the harm she's caused her children and seems to prefer living in the past, when she was a diva and still had her youth.Nevertheless, Fassaert doesn't fail in drawing out some painful memories from Marianne as well. In a pivotal scene, she reveals to Tom (for the first time in history, she claims) lots of things about her childhood, how she sensed her father appreciated her only because of her looks, how she had to put money on the table as a single mom through modeling, etc. You quickly get a sense of where she's coming from and the transgenerational impact of child-parent relationships and trauma's.The crux of the matter, however, is that the tears she sheds during this conversation aren't shed for her sons, but for herself. She never truly atones for the pain she's caused her children nor does she seem really aware of it. And that's the real tragedy: these children (in the sense that they are still 'children') are essentially waiting their entire lives for the Big Talk with their mother, where they all lay their cards on the table, so that they can let the healing can begin. However, Marianne, damaged as she is in her own way, will never be able to meet those demands.Fassaert presents all this and more in a wonderfully natural documentary that never devolves into melodrama. It couldn't have been easy, spending five years making this documentary, having been warned by his father to not let himself be fooled by Marianne, this 'expert manipulator'. But the end result isn't just some family melodrama, but a universal cautionary tale to all families, to not let the unspoken remain unspoken.
