A comic portrait of an unusual, unconventional but very American family which doesn’t know what to do with its huge wealth. Father Cleveland (Harry Dean Stanton) is a self-made millionaire thanks to puke-green lemonade and mini-golf courses. He is contemplating the idea of breeding mini-cows, but is afraid of losing them in the tall grass, where they would fall foul of turkeys and chickens. He is about to get married to Virginia, a local television personality. His son Howdy exhausts himself in Byronian poses (including strokes with a whip), seeking leather clothing which suits his guitar and singing awful songs which are a mixture of new wave and Celtic poetry. Cleveland’s daughter Maureen drinks too much, has a little daughter Violet and regards herself as a 24½year-old failure. The mother of the house has happily escaped the family and is in an institution.Twister doesn’t look at first sight like a film, it is more like a novel that someone is reading at their own pace; the film is filled with pauses, detours and dead ends. Considering everything, no event is any more important than another.Almereyda’s feature-film was well received in the USA. Variety: ‘Connoisseurs of the off-beat will tumble for Twister, Almereyda’s sly comedy about an eccentric Kansas family.’
