In The Breakfast Club, the five teen protagonists sit around discussing their parents’ failures. They pour their passionate young hearts out about these dead adult hearts and lament the loss. The Land of Steady Habits is like getting an alternative view of the parents in The Breakfast Club. The decade is different, but the adult characters in Nicole Holofcener’s latest feature could all too easily be the parents of Andrew and Claire . They are, typically for Holofcener, affluent, white, and middle class Americans, living tastefully in beautiful homes, and traversing middle age problems, which inevitably involve the middle age problems of youth.

The central character is Anders (played by Ben Mendelsohn). Recently divorced from his wife Helene (Edie Falco), and recently unemployed. Anders recent state is a creature of his own making. He has decided to set himself adrift from decades of embeddedness. The film traces his forced consideration of why, as Anders is compelled to face the consequences of his actions.

The film delves into inter-generational relationships. Anders gets little traction with his own son Preston (Thomas Mann) but finds rapport with the son of his friends. In a moment of madness perfectly in keeping with Anders’ recent decision to leave his wife and job, he does PCP at a family Christmas party with Charlie (Charlie Tahan), the teenage son of the hosts who happen to be Anders’ (really his ex-wife’s) friends.

It’s a decision that frames Anders in a new light for Charlie, who is lost and disconnected from his own parents. The two establish a connection, based on Charlie’s reading of Anders as a different breed of adult. This connection and Anders’ decisions funnel events toward a reckoning.

Theirs is not the only inter-generational pairing beyond parent and child. Charlie’s mother Sophie (played by Elizabeth Marvel), despairing of her son and worried sick, offers maternal comfort to Preston, the son of Anders and Helene. Children and parents are seeking better relationships with stand-in versions of family members to which they cannot relate.

The ‘steady habits’ of the title relate to the various addictions that afflict most of the key characters. From wine, to PCP, to gambling, they’re all living lives of quiet desperation. Other addictions are broken, a bad marriage, an unethical career. Yet Anders makes himself inexplicable to others in these seemingly revolutionary decisions.

Ben Mendelsohn’s performance is engaging and note perfect. Anders is lost, somewhat of his own volition, but he’s searching. Searching in a sea of consumer goods and very bad sex, and seeking some meaning to justify his decisions to leave everything he knew. The audience watch his missteps and fumbles, and quietly cheer for his realisation that he is acting like a child. In his relationship with Charlie, Anders eventually shakes off the disguise of youth he has been wearing.

Holofcener may have plumped for a male-centred story in this film, but the supporting characters are beautifully realised. Connie Britton’s Barbara, who begins to date Anders after meeting him in a strip club where she’s gone on a bad date, is a treat. Although we do not see much of her, it’s a role that has been written in three dimensions. Likewise Edie Falco and Elizabeth Marvel offer nuance and heartbreaking pathos in their roles as embattled mothers of wayward sons. Their performances throughout are captivating.

Once again, Holofcener serves up a slice of the American dream lived by very ordinary people.

Nicole Holofcener is a true American auteur. Steady Habits is a quintessential look at her perennial themes… this time from the male perspective. It’s a cleverly engaging and absorbing slice of adult film-making.

3/5