& Sons: a twisty domestic drama that never quite transcends its own gimmickry

The Bad Art Dad is an enduring archetype; he’s hatefully lovable, and vice versa, a perfect vessel to prove the divinity of forgiveness. He’s also been overexposed of late into prestige-movie cliché. Everywhere you look, sacred monsters are begging for indulgence from their loved ones – there’s arthouse clout in sentimental value.

Cue A.N. Dyer (Bill Nighy), the reclusive, brilliant novelist at the centre of Pablo Trapero’s new drama & Sons. For all his established mastery of vocabulary and syntax, Father Dyer isn’t great at communicating; his preferred form of conversation is the monologue, whether or not he knows he’s talking to himself. “I don’t do phone calls,” he moans to his youngest son Andy (Noah Jupe) as the latter tries to rouse him from what would seem to be a standard-issue mid-afternoon alcoholic stupor.

The news on the other end of the line is melancholy. An old friend has died – one of the few who stood by Dyer over the years as he descended into solipsistic oblivion. Perhaps feeling the icy hand on his own neck, our man convenes his two older sons to hear an unexpected disclosure. For all their divergent tendencies and temperaments, Richard (Johnny Flynn), a filmmaker, and Jamie (George MacKay), a visual artist, present a united front. They’re mutually appalled by their father’s narcissism, especially the extramarital affair that chased off their mother Isabel (Imelda Staunton) and yielded Andy in the process. By the end of Dyer’s story, which involves a dark confession, they’re in solidarity over something completely different: they’re certain that the old man has lost his mind.

To be fair, the story does sound crazy, and it’s difficult to talk about & Sons without at least gesturing towards its big narrative twist (which has been retained from David Gilbert’s 2013 source novel). Suffice it to say that the aftermath of Dyer’s tale splits the difference between familial melodrama and speculative science-fiction, with a light smattering of drawing-room comedy. “Dad, I’m not sure that that’s a real word, how are you spelling this word?” sputters Richard after his father reveals his past dealings with a ‘palingeneticist’ ostensibly connected to the legacy of Alfred Nobel. That gilded legacy is important insofar as it suits Dyer’s inflated sense of self; he’s just self-important enough to imagine himself at the centre of a lit-world riff on The Boys from Brazil (1978).

The elusive nature of truth – and the extent to which artists are uniquely equipped to send the ones they love on extra-wild goose chases for it – is a good subject. Doubly so for Oscar-winning screenwriter-for-hire Sarah Polley, whose acclaimed 2012 documentary Stories We Tell pivoted on a similar (and autobiographical) revelation about displaced parentage. Because we know Dyer to be a master storyteller, there’s a decent chance that he’s peddling fabulism; his surreal origin story for Andy recasts him from accident to experiment, and in the process takes some of the edge off his pop’s bad behaviour. But would such a fine writer really contrive such a shaggy-sheep story? And: if Dyer isn’t lying, then what are we to make of Andy?

These are good questions, and & Sons raises them, each in turn, with diligence, if not exactly an abundance of showmanship. Trapero’s best Argentinian films, Rolling Family (2004) and The Clan (2015), dealt with (very different) domestic dynamics, and yet for all his evident talent for staging interpersonal confrontations, the director never quite transcends the conceptual gimmickry of the project. It might be that material like this requires a more detached or stridently deadpan sensibility, and Trapero errs – however skilfully – on the side of naturalism. The longer the film goes on, the more of a drag it becomes. The director does get good stuff from his actors, however, especially MacKay, whose perpetually wide, staring eyes turn him into a walking double take, and Staunton, who galvanises the movie when Isabel returns to confront her ex-husband. Strangely, the most uneven performance comes from the main attraction; in a movie that requires its patriarch to be polarising, Nighy is merely middling – an old pro cruising on autopilot.

► & Sons is in UK cinemas from 21 August.