YOU CAN COUNT ON ME
by Sasha Stone

At first glance, the title You Can Count on Me seems all wrong for one of the best film offerings of the year. After seeing the film, however, it's easy to see why writer/director Ken Lonergan used those carefully chosen words: we count on people to let us down as much as we count on them to save us.

At first you think Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry (Mark Ruffalo) can count on each other, having lost their parents when they were both children, but when the wayward Terry drifts back into his sister's life, they find, despite their best intentions, that what draws them together also rips them apart.

Sammy is a hard-working single mother who has worn a groove of routine in order to provide stability for her eight-year-old son Rudy (Rory Culkin). There is a sense that her schedule is the only thing holding their fragile world together: She drives her son to the bus, then goes to work, then breaks free from work around three to pick him up and drive him to the sitter's, then she's back at work.

Even before her brother Terry shows up in her life, her new boss Brian (Matthew Broderick) forces her to break the routine because he can't allow her to leave work, even for fifteen minutes, even if it cuts into her lunch hour. She promises to find someone to do this for her, though clearly, she struggles with it. So when Terry shows up, it seems inevitable he will be the missing piece in Sammy's jigsaw puzzle to put things back together again.

Almost immediately, Terry is restless. Sitting in a restaurant, facing each other for the first time in years, Sammy and Terry are at each other's throats: Terry wants money, Sammy wants to know he'll be all right, that he's not going to fall off the edge of the earth, and perhaps if he stays in Scottsdale for a while she can wear a groove of routine for him too, and he will be okay.

But for Sammy to "fix" Terry's life is like trying to predict and control East Coast weather - Terry is as unpredictable and volatile as any wild thing brought in out of the cold. He doesn't know what he wants, he doesn't know where he's going, he only knows what he's running away from in the moment that he's running.

And if, somehow, Terry does manage stability, just as Sammy manages instability, for a brief time, he will find a way to derail his life just as Sammy is getting back on track. It's as if there is only one set of rails that can't be shared.

Lonergan's characters are always surprising us with each layer that gets peeled back. It is not an easy story to take, despite the many humorous moments. Mostly your heart breaks for Terry and Sammy, who are both heroes in their own ways - Sammy, because her big heart dictates her behavior; she can't let anyone down ever - and Terry because he absorbs other people's pain as much as Sammy does. It's as if the early tragedy in their lives made them forever empathetic, almost to a fault.

Ruffalo shows just how good he is in the scene where Sammy has called her minister (played by Ken Lonergan) to give Terry a talking to. "Do you think your life is important?" he asks. Waves of emotion shade Terry's face - embarrassment, anger, hurt - but what's amazing is that he doesn't get up and walk out of the room; he stays and talks it out, stating his side with all the courage he can muster. In lesser hands, Terry would have stormed out of the room leaving things unresolved, but Lonergan knows that Terry cares. Ruffalo is an actor so emotionally raw and unpredictable that he recalls, as one friend noted, a modern day Sal Mineo or Monty Clift.

Laura Linney has been kicking around Hollywood for years, with supporting parts, usually as rather shrill, hysterical women (The Truman Show and Primal Fear), but her Sammy is easily the most interesting role of her career, and one of the best performances of the year. We're so used to seeing single moms portrayed one way - as a short cut to sympathy. But Lonergan never makes Sammy out to be someone you feel sorry for. She's far from perfect, but you admire her anyway - she is among the women who keep the world from falling apart.

You Can Count on Me has already racked up a pile of awards, including the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and the grand prize (a tie with Girlfight) at Sundance, and has some hefty names in the producing category, Martin Scorsese and Barbara de Fina. Lonergan's already brilliant theatrical career makes a seamless leap with this debut on the big screen. For instance, all we need is one shot of Brian's wife ripping her hand away to understand Sammy's boss, and why she starts sleeping with him. Or the look in Rudy's father's eyes - everything explained using no words at all. You'd think Lonergan had been directing films for years.

So, what about the title? As awkward as it is, there could be no other title for this film. The simple phrase means so much here: a well-meaning promise that is as hopeful as it is untrue.

CineScene, 2001