The Upside of Anger

The terrible results of sin seep into every part of the characters' painful lives | Andrew Coffin

"What doesn't kill you makes you stronger." That oft-recited phrase has the ring of truth, and to the Christian, growth through adversity is known as sanctification.

But without grace, a stoically optimistic attitude obscures the very damaging consequences hurtful actions can have.

And this is one of the key problems with The Upside of Anger (rated R for language, brief comic violence, and some drug use), a sad, often biting look at a family in the grip of anger. The film wants us to believe that however horribly its characters act, in the end things will turn out OK through some magical act of catharsis.

Anger is too soft a word, really. It's rage, smoldering, sometimes flaring, that defines Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen), a mother of four whose husband has taken a sudden and unexplained absence from his family. We first meet Terry this way—we don't know her, except by the description of one of her daughters, as the kind, unflappable woman she once was. The Terry the audience meets has already deduced that her husband jumped on a plane with his Swedish secretary and has gone about accepting this turn of events with the help of a bottle of vodka and a ready supply of lime wedges. (Upside is one of those rare films in which the excess on screen—in this case, heavy drinking—is so concentrated and severe that it completely deglamorizes what is often seen as an appealing vice.)