Father and Son

It isn't often that I throw up my hands and say "you got me," but Father and Son, from Russian director Alexander Sokurov, is a real head-scratcher. In some seaside town, a military-vet father (Andrey Schetinin) and his military-cadet son (Aleksey Neymyshev) wage an oedipal battle the likes of which you've never seen. They parry, they thrust, but mostly they huddle, cuddle and profess their love. Sokurov has denied any homoerotic intentions, to which this befuddled critic can only say, "Yeah, right." If nothing else, the movie underlines just how intimate a son's attachment to his father can be, something that most sons try very hard to deny.