The Talent Given Us (2005)

NOW THAT'S 'TALENT' A road trip with the brood yields gold

Andrew Wagner's casually astonishing film The Talent Given Us explodes the notion that there are no more permutations of reality-bending left to surprise us in storytelling. Using resources extremely close at hand, he casts his own mother, father, and two sisters as themselves, an average-but-unique family of voluble Manhattanites driving cross-country to visit the unit's reclusive, absent member, Andrew — a filmmaker in L.A. Are they just being themselves, this clan of let-it-all-hang-out yakkers, as they squabble, eat, play, and digress? Are they acting? Wagner — who is, of course, an invisible passenger — lets his family take star billing in a film of uncommon originality.