Though the last 10 minutes or so, which deal with Mariel Hemingway's suicide-prevention activism and participation in a walkathon, are quite touching, this unfocused documentary bogs down badly for the 90 minutes that come before. What it shows is a wealthy, white, bourgeois, deeply screwed up family of American WASPs—but if that's mental illness, then 80% of the Republican party is mentally ill. Alcoholism, drug abuse, unhappy marriages, neglected children, allegations of sex abuse and the completely typical attendant family dramas about who is lying about that abuse and who is refusing to acknowledge the truth may have a certain soap-operaish, staring-at- a-train-wreck appeal, but they are connected to the topic of mental illness and suicide by only the flimsiest of threads. The film is uncomfortable to watch because much of its "realness" is presented without context or analysis. When Mariel visits her oldest sister, Joan (Muffet), who is semi- institutionalized, Joan is clearly suffering symptoms of tardive dyskinesia brought about by long-time use of anti-psychotics. The fact that the two women giggle and reminisce as if things were perfectly normal but with no mention of Joan's condition is simply gruesome. Nor is there any commentary regarding Mariel's bizarre, exploitative decision to visit her sister after not having seen her for more than a year, apparently solely so she can film the encounter for the documentary. Scenes of Mariel's interactions with her husband who is – let's be honest about it – a cruel, sexist, abusive jerk, only underscore the extent to which the film's material is undigested; there's something both disturbing and naive about the idea that depicting emotional pain is the same as having insight into it. Unhappy families may experience unhappiness each in their own way, but there's very little in this film to hint that members of the Hemingway clan have learned much about coping with theirs.
