The House of Yes

Apart from a disturbing home-movie prologue and epilogue, director Mark Waters sticks closely to the text and setting of Wendy MacLeod's terrific, perversely goofy incest comedy, and while the resulting staginess limits the movie's effectiveness, it also retains the source material's considerable claustrophobic bite. The plot revolves around a frighteningly dysfunctional family whose cloistered world seems to center on daughter Jackie-O (Parker Posey, who deservedly won a special acting award at Sundance for this performance), who clearly identifies rather too strongly with John F. Kennedy's tragic widow and somehow seems just a tad too enamored of her brother Marty (Josh Hamilton). The somber conclusion doesn't work in either medium, but it's preceded by so much killer dialogue that the anticlimax seems forgivable. Recommended. (M. D'Angelo)