As They Made Us

As They Made Us

Mayim Bialik, who has been an actress all her life, knows better than to hog the spotlight with her feature filmmaking debut, “As They Made Us.” Bialik writes directs and produces here, and the strongest moments she creates are the ones that are most understated when she gives room for Dianna Agron, Dustin Hoffman, Candice Bergen and her “Big Bang Theory” co-star Simon Helberg to find the nuance in the characters and their complicated interpersonal dynamics. But it takes a little while to get there, resulting in a well acted but uneven family drama.

“For about the first half of ‘As They Made Us,’ it feels like two different movies awkwardly shoved together. In one, Abigail (Agron) is a recently divorced mother of two rambunctious boys who struggles to find love again. In the other, Abigail navigates the increasing demands of her dysfunctional family as Eugene (Hoffman), the patriarch slips deeper into a debilitating ailment.

Ostensibly, the latter informs the former; flashbacks reveal Eugene’s verbally and physically abusive history with his daughter as well as his volatile spats with Barbara (Bergen), but this back-and-forth structure gives the film an uneasy early rhythm ; “As They Made Us” finds surer footing when it focuses on present-day challenges instead.

Eugene is such a mercurial artist that he was actually terrifying in his younger days (we see quick shocking flashes of this). Now he’s weak and confused at what appears to be judging by his appearance near death. His wife Barbara (Bergen) is such a narcissist that she’s incapable of actually caring for him; instead she uses it as another opportunity to belittle him.

Yet at the same time she pushes away every doctor or caregiver assigned to him so Abigail must step in as problem solver. Older brother Nathan (Helberg) has been estranged from the family for 20 years because of these things and more, but now Abigail pleads for him to return, make amends, say his final farewells. Everyone is basically terrible, and so it falls to Abigail to sort through the nonsense and noise.

But this is no wacky, screwed up family comedy; “As They Made Us” is most effective in its gentle, intimate everyday moments and Bialik mercifully refrains from melodrama as the film reaches its tearful conclusion. Anyone who has lost a loved one after a long illness will recognize the agonizing wait depicted here in tasteful, matter of fact fashion as well as the awkward attempts at peacemaking that can happen when people try to set aside their differences under such circumstances.

Agron performs this meaty role with grace, discovering a soft touch in the comic moments and an honesty in the dramatic ones. But her best work is opposite her veteran co-stars. Acting with Justin Chu Cary as Jay, the landscaper whom she tentatively dates, Agron shares a sweet, light chemistry (although Bialik’s first date with them at a sushi restaurant is an example of how the director tends to hold back slightly too far with the camera; these are two good-looking people flirting easily with each other don’t keep us at such a remove).

Helberg has more of a sporadic, supporting presence; he’s particularly strong in a scene where Nathan and Eugene awkwardly reunite after decades apart, now that the father is a ghost of his former self. Again, Bialik knows enough to let the inherent drama speak for itself. And obviously Hoffman and Bergen are total pros; they find so much about their characters’ interior lives through small things they do with their bodies.

“As They Made Us” definitely feels like Bialik’s debut on all levels it’s personal and ambitious but also uneven but there’s enough here that works to make you interested in seeing whatever else she wants to tell us next.

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