The Upside of Anger

The Upside of Anger is a well-acted drama about an otherwise well-functioning and well-off family that almost falls apart when the father suddenly disappears without a word. From one day to the next Terry Wolfmeyer changes from being the almost perfect stay-at-home wife and mother of 4 pretty and capable teenage girls into a boozy slattern who shuffles around in her dressing gown with a cigarette and a glass in her hand half the day. The daughters have to manage the cooking and so on themselves, but unlike their mother they take their father's disappearance in their stride. Terry, on the other hand, needs vodka and other hard stuff to drown the thought that her husband has probably left her for his Swedish secretary.

In the midst of Terry's self-pitying bender, an acquaintance of the family, the former baseball star Denny, turns up. He has always been a little sweet on Terry and is also fond of a beer or several. At first he is content to be her drinking buddy, but he would like a bit more. His patience is sorely tested, for it takes time for Terry to climb out of the black hole she has fallen into, and her erratic moods take a heavy toll on Denny, the girls and the boyfriends they introduce her to.

The Upside of Anger has a sympathetic message that after a downturn of one kind or another, life will become worth living again. We have got the point, but even so a fundamentally unnecessary ending has been tacked on that is a little too far-fetched and does not exactly add to the realism. Realism is lacking in another respect too. It might have been interesting to follow the same issue in a family that does not, like the Wolfmeyers, live on the sunny side of life. Here the focus is exclusively on the emotional decline, so Terry's depression smacks a little of luxury problems. In a middle-class or working-class family the financial consequences would be pretty decisive when the only working parent in a family of 6 no longer earns the daily bread, but that will have to be another story.