How's this for a downbeat premise? An adult brother and sister are told that their father - who treated them dismally as kids - is showing signs of dementia, and needs to be put into a home. It's heavy stuff, for the most part naturalistically depicted, but there's a quorum of humour.

Wendy (Laura Linney) is an aspiring New York playwright, and Jon (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is an unpretentious university professor. Their own substantial personal problems take a back seat because, as Jon says, "Dad is writing on the walls with his shit". The father, Lenny Savage (veteran character actor Philip Bosco), is belligerent and charmless, and it's hard to disagree with Jon's assessment that, "We're doin' the right thing - we're taking better care of the old man than he ever took of us".

Hoffman may get most of the punchier and more quotable lines, but Linney is onscreen a lot longer, and there's a sub-plot about her imperfect relationship with a married man that further deepens her character. But Lenny's slide to oblivion is the meat of the matter, with hospitals and aged-care institutions being more of a focus than flats or lecture rooms. Along the way, there are swipes at the sort of euphemistic culture which denies that "death is gaseous and gruesome". For the most part, writer-director Tamara Jenkins (The Slums Of Beverly Hills) has created one of those Bergman-esque dramas that Woody Allen always talks about making, interwoven with some of his wit. It's a bit of a weepie, but it's also low-key and restrained. In other words, it's quite good. That said, the film is marred by occasionally irritating "quirky" elements, and the sort of fatuous ending that smacks of the undue influence of test screenings.