Jamie passion and passionfruit!

A weird old documentary in which we visit the Friedmans of Long Island who are by no means a miles difference from The Squid and The Whale family.  There are the same centrifugal destructive forces in the family – the egoistic obsessive father, the obsessive sons, the passive aggressive mother ....  This time however pedophelia and child abuse of young students is in the mix.  Did they or didn’t they?  The investigators were mostly sure of it and there were loads of testimony against them but precious little hard evidence – no marks to the children, etc.  In the end, the inevitability of being convicted led father and son to plea guilty and serve time but we are hardly convinced legally of their guilt.  Emotionally, their strange approach to life and the eldest son’s obsession with filming everything  does tend to stick a few nails in their coffin – they appear like the types who could do this sort of thing and the fact that the mother wouldn’t stand by hubby didn’t help.  I’m not sure if I liked this documentary much but it is a solid piece of film making with a remarkably even handed approach. Andrew Jarecki extracts some lovely comments from the family the best being the wife’s wistful thought that the husband used porn magazines to meditate to! The homemade film he had access to is a boon for any director as is this dysfunctional family who just go to prove that truth can be way stranger than fiction.

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