USA: Diane Keaton and Sarah Jessica Parker speak about their latest film "The Family Stone"

With his observations about the clash between a tightly wound Manhattan careerist and her boyfriend's loose-limbed New England clan, writer-director Thomas Bezucha puts a new slant on the dynamics of family-reunion Christmas movies. Throughout the film the point of focus is Diane Keaton's funny, spot-on natural portrait of the formidable Stone matriarch. "It was really for me honoring mothers. Just honoring mothers from a different point of view. The whole cycle that kind of goes before our eyes in the course of this movie and the different aspects of love and loss and all those things kind of focused on the mother. I thought about my mother all the time," Keaton told Reuters in Los Angeles, California. Fans of the actress and of Sarah Jessica Parker, in her first major post- "Sex and the City" film role, should be a draw for older audiences and women. The story unfolds over three days in an unidentified New England town, where Meredith and her boyfriend, Everett (Dermot Mulroney), visit his arty mother and professor father (Craig T. Nelson) and her sister Julie (Claire Danes) supposedly come to her rescue. The deck is stacked against her: Everett's outspoken younger sister Amy (Rachel McAdams), having already met Meredith, hates her. And Sybil (Keaton), a striking, casually dressed woman with a Susan Sontag-style shock of white hair, regards Meredith with a roll of the eyes when she crosses the threshold in black power pumps that couldn't be more out of place. "There have been people who did not last but I would like to think we treat them with civility and kindness and hospitable but I think a family knows fairly quickly upon meeting somebody their own opinions about that person but I think as a rule we tend to let adults kind of come to their own conclusions I do not think it ever helps to try and drive a wedge through a relationship people tend to go toward then run from it," Parker said about her own family. The roundelay begins, according to Mulroney, when Meredith, speaking her mind, plants both feet firmly in her mouth. "Well it's just she wants things to go smoothly and what happens in this is Meredith gets so anxious and uptight and it just gets worse and the whole gets deeper and she tries to fix it and she says something stupider then she already said it is completely understandable it goes to show you if you go into a situation comfortable in your own skin that is what ends up happening with a lot of characters they sort of revert to who they really are my character included," Mulroney said. It's no wonder that Sybil is bracing herself against Everett's request for the heirloom ring. Although she's not always likeable, her toughness and honesty are her family's life force. McAdams admits that she could not focus on her lines while trying to act with a veteran Keaton in the room. "I was completely tongue tied I do not even want to know what I said. I do not remember anything It is completely black to me. I was so nervous we got over that. I have to say I am completely mesmerized by her. I missed so many queues when I was acting in a scene with her because I could not take my eyes off of her truly it was the most bizarre thing, " McAdams said. "The Family Stone" opens in the United States on December

ITN Source | December 21, 2005

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