A Family Affair

A sun-scorched Los Angeles cul-de-sac becomes the stage for a three-tiered emotional inferno when 19-year-old Ziggy, a Gen-Z Rimbaud armed with ring-light narcissism and a TikTok follower count the size of Lithuania, discovers that her widowed mother—once an underground zine poet, now a boutique skincare alchemist—has been clandestinely reheising erotic duets with the very washed-up superhero-franchise star who fired Ziggy from her PA gig for ‘excessive eye contact.’ The actor, a 48-year-old human brand-extension whose jawline has outlived his talent, arrives nightly in a matte-black Rivian, clutching a dog-eared copy of Krazy Kat—George Herriman’s liminal love triangle of brick-tossing longing—whose metaphysical slapstick bleeds into the household’s own geometry of desire. Over one sweltering summer, the pool’s chlorinated mirror reflects shifting power vectors: the mother reclaims the erotic narrative she surrendered to marriage; the daughter weaponizes vulnerability as currency; the star, terrified of obsolescence, learns that middle-aged abs are not indemnity against heartbreak. What begins as a screwball erotic farce—keys in the fishbowl, edibles shaped like Oscar statuettes—mutates into a bruised meditation on who gets to occupy the spotlight of American affection when the credits finally roll. Herriman’s screenplay, equal parts comic-strip panel and chamber opera, ends with a tracking shot that literally rewinds: rose petals suck back onto stems, text messages leap into phones, the Rivian reverses into night, suggesting that family dysfunction is less a chronology than a Möbius strip you keep driving around, sun-blind and horny, forever.