It’s been said that virtually everyone has wanted to switch families at some point in their lives, but if everybody’s dirty laundry and closeted skeletons were dragged out into the light of day and put in the middle of a room, how quickly most of us would snatch back our own little bundle of dysfunction. That maxim is on display in The Perfect Family, a comedy about a mother forced to choose between her engrained religious beliefs and her family. Director Anne Renton’s film stars Kathleen Turner as a devoutly Catholic suburban mother, Eileen Cleary, who — when running for the “Catholic Woman of the Year” title at her local parish, an award she’s coveted for years — is forced to cope with an unhappily married son, a gay daughter’s impending nuptials, and the strains of her own marriage. I recently had a chance to speak one-on-one to the Australian-born Renton, about religion, Turner and the state and struggles of independent filmmaking. The conversation is excerpted over at ShockYa, so click here for the read.
