My first conflict of interest

It’s not often in my career that I’ve had to deal with conflicts of interest. I do know one Australian director, the husband of one of my wife’s school friends, but I’ve never reviewed any of his films. I have, however, given them star ratings on Letterboxd, ranked them on Flickchart and included them on my year-end lists.

But now I’ve got a real conflict of interest, and I’m not going to do any of those things.

Tonight I am seeing the world premiere of A Family, a deadpan comedy that I’m told has a sense of humor similar to that of Yorgos Lanthimos. It was directed by Jayden Stevens, who shot it in Ukraine with his director of photography, Tom Swinburn.

This film is also produced by my wife.

She didn’t go to Ukraine, but she’s handled all the producer duties for post back in Australia, and it’s eaten up a good amount of her attention over the past year. I’m not going to name my wife, though you could probably look it up if you were interested. It’ll be in keeping with my policy of not naming either my wife or my children by anything other than their titles (“my wife,” “my younger son,” “my older son”), a policy that dates back to the very beginning of this blog.

The film got into MIFF and in fact received some funding from MIFF as part of MIFF’s Premiere Fund, which helped them complete the film. Interest has been high, and not only among Jayden’s friends. I know tonight is sold out, at least, and I believe Tuesday night is as well. It was popular enough that they added a third screening of it next Thursday in the afternoon.

I will likely spend the entire movie figuring out what to say about it to the interested parties after the movie ends. But I will say it to them and to them only.

I think it’s probably obvious that I won’t review the film, but I’ve also decided not to give it a star rating on Letterboxd, not to rank it on Flickchart, and definitely not to include it in my year-end list of rankings. It will appear only on lists that bear no assessment of its quality, like the alphabetical list of all the movies I’ve ever seen, or a similar list of movies released in 2019. I may include it in Letterboxd so it can take up its place in the chronological continuum of films I’ve seen, but it will have no star rating.

It seems only right. No, this is not my wife’s brainchild per se, though she did provide notes on the script, a role that led to her involvement as producer. And I know Jayden and Tom a lot less well than I know my wife’s school friend’s husband, whose films I did star-rate and list.

But I think this is how it needs to be. I can’t watch this thing that my wife has spent so much time on and reduce it to a numerical value. I understand that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and if I were to agree with that and just slap a “3.5 stars” on it (which is probably as low as I would allow myself to go), it just wouldn’t feel right.

So I’m breaking from traditions that are more than 20 years ingrained in me, and leaving A Family utterly undiscussed, unranked, and unclassified -- in any public forum, anyway.

But before I’ve seen it, I feel like I can say this: Remember this title, and seek it out when it hits a theater near you, or more likely a streaming service, or possibly nowhere, but I hope not.

Because I can’t pretend I’m not invested in my wife’s career, and damn, I hope it’s good.