IFC First Take

"Family Law" is a meticulously observed story about fathers and sons within the Argentine Jewish community. Screenwriter-director Daniel Burman and lead actor Daniel Hendler, who worked together on Burman's terrific "Lost Embrace," again explore the desires, concerns and key decisions that go into family life. What the film desperately lacks, however, is any meaningful conflict. Thus, there is little story here.

Things beneath a fairly placid surface are equally as placid. Husband and wife have an almost serene relationship; their well-adjusted young son (Eloy Burman, the director's child) can't be cuter; and the one crisis that does develop, involving the husband's father, arrives more as a shock than a situation to challenge the characters over a period of time.

Director Burman sets his story in a family of lawyers not unlike his own, yet never establishes any profound relationship between these characters and that particular profession. The focus here is strictly on personality as it evolves in the daily routine of work and family life. There are nuggets of truths to discover, but where's the drama?