Hollow Reed is an earnest but trite hand wringer about a custody battle between a gay guy and his ex-wife. It flirts with the modern topic of homosexual parenting, but is really just a Dastardly Dan melodrama, a watered down Kramer versus Kramer crossed with an episode of "Chicago Hope".
The damsel in distress is Oliver, a perceptive, intelligent child encircled by adults who cause him direct or indirect pain.
His father Martyn (Martin Donovan) is a doctor, and he’s a loving, attentive father. He lives in a great house with his quiet, supportive boyfriend, they have a good sex life, they never fight or fall out of rhythm.
Oliver’s flaky mother Hannah (Joely Richardson), on the other hand, has a shrewy tinkle to her eye, and though she too loves Oliver, she’s also hooked on her mean boyfriend, who she gives repeated second chances too, even after he bashes up her child. Hannah’s a little immature and anal, too - she still steams over Martyn’s homosexuality, and their resultant sham marriage.
No surprises so far, and there’s none to follow either. The angst of the plot is almost entirely of the stupid-legal system variety. We worry that Oliver is going to be stuck on the receiving end of regular beatings from Mum’s boyfriend because the courts always tend to favour the mother, especially if the father has a taste for cock.
There’s actually no real dramatic tension - we know from the start that Martyn is the better father, that his relationship is superior to Hannah’s, that her boyfriend is a violent pig, etc etc. As usual, an admirable attempt to reposition homosexuality - specifically, in this case, gay parenting - in the mainstream is undermined by a lack of creativity and a brainlessly melodramatic milieu. We don’t necessarily learn that gay couples can be good parents, we just want poor Oliver out of his screw-loose Mum’s house, and into safe hands.
We’d be more interested, and more likely to support Martyn’s case, if we were able to come to our own sympathy, rather than rooting for him because he’s the best available alternative. What a superior film this might have been if we’d have seen a few flaws in Martyn, a few cracks in his relationship, and had to make up our own minds who was the best parent. It would have been a far more interesting film, with real conflict. Instead, we’ve got the HIV-negative British cousin to Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, a saintly do-gooder homo with the complexity and charisma of a house brick. Even when he’s getting his face punched in by his ex-wife’s brutal de facto, Martyn wears a Christ-like facial expresssion, his silky hair hanging around his cheekbones like the sad floppy ears of the maudlin family bloodhound.
This could have been a very meaty drama about a group of flawed adults and the child that depends on them to finally do something right. Instead, we’ve got stock melodrama - good versus bad. Making all the good guys gay is lazy philanthropy, and the film is so forgettable it wasn’t until the last twenty minutes that I realised I’d actually seen it before.
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