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Rebecca Miller gives incest and environmentalism a bad rap in her second film, an overlong ballad that gets too operatic for its own good. Miller’s husband, Daniel Day Lewis, is gaunt and persnickety as Jack, a latter-day hippie who with his teenage daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) is the last resident of a defunct ’70s commune on an island off the East Coast. Developers have invaded, and Jack amuses himself by firing a shotgun at builders working on the new construction. But his health, like the movement, is fading fast (blame cigarettes and impractical idealism), and in order to provide for Rose, he brings his brassy girlfriend, Kathleen (Catherine Keener), and her two sons — sinister Thaddius (Paul Dano, doomed to playing creeps since his terrific debut in L.I.E.) and gay and overweight Rodney (Ryan McDonald) — into the household. What starts as a formulaic John Sayles movie turns into a creepy and pretentious sexual-initiation story as precocious Rose outdoes her dad in extravagant behavior to get his attention. Despite Day Lewis’s noble anguish, the youngsters provide the film’s only credibility and amusement, and a climax involving the most overwrought snake symbolism since The Lair of the White Worm suggests that Miller should focus on short stories. (111 minutes)
BY PETER KEOUGH
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