The Daytrippers

The Daytrippers offers a humorous look at misunderstandings and suppressed emotions in an Archie Bunker-like family. Eliza and Louis live in a suburb on Long Island. While Louis has gone to work at a publisher in Manhattan, Eliza finds a letter that looks very like a declaration of love to her husband. She is shocked and goes to her parents for advise. Her father listens quietly, but her mother decides that they have to talk to the son-in-law straight away. The family, including Eliza's rebellious little sister and her boyfriend, a not-very-talented would-be writer, head for the city by car. Louis is not at the office, but later that evening he is expected at a book presentation, according to his slimy and insecure boss. The family decides to wait for him. In the meantime they meet a variety of New Yorkers, when they are not in the car quarrelling.In The Daytrippers the actors sustain the film. Anna Meara as thedominant mother, Parker Posey as her obstreperous daughter, Hope Davis as the young and confused woman who had just adapted to life in the suburbs and whose world is now threatening to collapse, and above all old-timer McNamara: they are all on top form. They show how you can use themes derived from soap operas in a way reminiscent of Ernst Lubitsch, Douglas Sirk or Woody Allen.