‘& Sons’ Review: In the Name of the Father
In his English-language debut, Argentine director Pablo Trapero adapts David Gilbert’s novel into an intense family drama. Bill Nighy plays a reclusive writer who summons his estranged sons to his country estate, forcing long-buried wounds and secrets to the surface as reality begins to blur.
After years of unrealized projects, one of Argentina’s most essential filmmakers, Pablo Trapero, finally makes his English-language debut with & Sons, a brooding family drama led by an impressive British cast. Quite different from the social realism that defined his early work, the film feels closest to The Quietude—another of Trapero’s ventures into emotional melodrama—though this one moves in darker, more eccentric directions. What he delivers is an exploration of a family so fractured and strange that it often feels like it exists outside reality itself.
At the story’s center is Andrew Dyer (Bill Nighy), a once-celebrated novelist who’s become a reclusive wreck, rattling around his sprawling countryside mansion. He hasn’t left the property in nearly two decades, spending his days drinking, blasting music, and drifting aimlessly through endless rooms like a ghost of his former self. His teenage son, Andy Jr. (Noah Jupe, A Quiet Place), tries to hold things together, with the help of a loyal housekeeper, Gerde (Anna Geislerová).
After a humiliating social appearance that confirms how far gone he really is, Andrew summons his two older sons, Richard (Johnny Flynn) and Jamie (George MacKay, 1917), both of whom he’s barely seen in years. Richard, who lives in the U.S., arrives with his own teenage son, while Jamie—now a documentary filmmaker—remains closer to his mother Isabel (Imelda Staunton, quietly magnificent here). Once there they meet Andy Jr., who is apparently the product of the affair that blew the family apart years ago.
Andrew claims to have called them together because he’s dying. But what he really wants to share is something stranger—a confession tied to an old secret that might not even be real. As his sons struggle to believe him, the film shifts from domestic drama toward something more ambiguous, even faintly fantastical. Is Andrew revealing the truth, or has he simply lost his mind after decades of isolation and alcohol?
Adapted from David Gilbert’s novel by Trapero and Sarah Polley, & Sons unfolds through long, charged conversations that often feel like stage scenes—intense, intimate, and slightly claustrophobic. Early on, the film flirts with dark comedy before settling into a heavier emotional register. When the revelation finally comes, it reshapes the story but also adds a touch of intrigue that the film doesn’t entirely need—the human wounds here were already deep enough.
At its heart, & Sons is a story about a monstrous father and the damaged sons left in his wake. Andrew tries to rationalize his actions and the strange twist in the plot stems from that desperate attempt at redemption. Yet the only real grace note comes from Isabel, Staunton’s quietly radiant ex-wife, who brings warmth and forgiveness to a house ruled by resentment and regret.
Visually, Trapero keeps the film alive with restless camera work and dynamic blocking, avoiding the static feel that often plagues dialogue-heavy dramas. A remarkable early sequence—a long tracking shot that simultaneously introduces Andrew’s drunken disarray and the sheer scale of his mansion—sets the tone. Still, the film occasionally loses focus, circling its emotional core before returning to it in waves. Beneath its mystery and family tension, & Sons remains a story of decay, guilt, and the long shadow of paternal failure.
In the end, this feels less like a reinvention for Trapero than a detour. His English-language foray is confident but slightly misaligned with the raw intensity that drives his best work, from El bonaerense to The Clan. If ZeroZeroZero—his international TV series about global cartels—felt like a more natural extension of his world, this one seems more like an experiment, an exercise in tone and mood. Soon returning to familiar ground with Gordon, his Netflix adaptation of Marcelo Larraquy’s novel about Argentina’s political and police violence of the 1970s and ’80s, Trapero seems poised to reclaim his more familiar territory. & Sons isn’t a failure, but it does feel like a filmmaker testing the limits of a cinematic language that isn’t quite his own.
