'A Family Affair' Produces a Surprisingly Earnest Exploration of Second Chances
On Netflix's A Family Affair, finding my passion, and embracing life's many chapters
I debated what to write about for a few days because A Family Affair surprised me.
I thought about writing a post discussing the movie’s central romance. After all, I originally made this newsletter to write about my love for romantic comedies.
The romance is sweet! Not only is it nice to see Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman reunite on-screen more than a decade after The Paperboy, but the love story between Efron’s movie star—not celebrity—Chris Cole and Kidman’s Brooke Harwood, widowed writer and mother to Joey King’s Zara, is actually endearing. The characters have depth independent from the romance, which is essential for me to root for a love story, and it’s charming to see Chris and Brooke reintroduce themselves to themselves while they fall in love with each other.
Chris becomes less of an antagonizing and annoying boss with a superiority complex and more of a man trying to figure out who he is and what he wants after putting on an act from an early age after two tough losses. Brooke learns to set boundaries with her daughter and embrace a new phase of her career and life after making herself smaller for her husband. Meanwhile, Zara works to make a name for herself as a producer and learns to see her mother as a complete person.
What can I say? It got to me! I’m sentimental (I cry about everything all the time, but I no longer find that embarrassing), so I may be an outlier or the target audience. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed this movie for what it was.
Also, as a long-time Efron fan (20 years!), it brings me a ridiculous amount of joy to see him excelling in a comedy again. I could be reading into it, but it feels like this movie nods to his filmography, too. The top hat = The Greatest Showman. The grill bit = Neighbors. Singing Cher in the car = High School Musical’s Troy Bolton would do that! And the range Efron shows in A Family Affair reminds me a lot of 17 Again and That Awkward Moment.
Anyway, I digress because I could ramble on about Zac Efron’s career forever.
A Family Affair may have a few distracting qualities, like its desire to recreate the aesthetic and charm of a Nancy Meyers movie and the near-constant classical version of Sabrina Carpenter’s “Feather” playing in the background. But the characters, mostly, cut through all that visual and actual noise to make the audience—or at least me—feel something.
I’m confident I’m not alone because one of my best friends kept texting me while I watched to see if I’d seen her favorite parts. And Nicole Kidman told Netflix this:
“I’ve wanted to do a rom-com for so long, and I rarely do them. I had done a number of very hard-hitting dramatic roles, and I was in a place where I just went, ‘My psyche is in desperate need of some love and some laughter and some fun.’”
This movie, written by Carrie Solomon and directed by Richard LaGravenese, ticks all those boxes for me, making it a successful way to spend my time. A Family Affair won’t be for everyone (Is anything?) and will mean something different to anyone who watches it (Doesn’t everything?).
For this 27-year-old woman finding her way as a writer in an era when AI is stomping out authenticity and robots are steamrolling creativity, watching a movie where my contemporary isn’t focused on romance but on her career is relatable. Although painfully self-centered for most of the movie, Zara finally knows what she wants to do, and that feeling is freeing and exhilarating.
I tried out so many career options when I was in high school. I saw my friends committed to lives as nurses and doctors (We could always use more of those!) or dedicated to business degrees that could take them all around the country—or the world. I always felt more untethered to an idea for my future, even when the people closest to me kept nudging me to see what was right in front of me.
So, I would badger my high school counselor weekly with a new career I was interested in—FBI agent, music producer, pediatric surgeon. Slowly, I realized those careers piqued my interest because of the stories I watched about them — the FBI agents in the field on Graceland, Peyton Sawyer opening TRIC on One Tree Hill, and Alex Karev choosing his specialty on Grey’s Anatomy.
Then, at the exact moment I needed it, I read If I Stay by Gayle Forman and saw the quote, “Sometimes you make choices in life, and sometimes choices make you.”
Finally, I admitted that I loved writing and wanted to pursue it, even though I knew creative work was uncertain. I was lucky to get an English degree, study stories and writers, and love (nearly) every second of it. Now, I write about stories every single day—and I get to write this newsletter that I love so much.
If I could go back and talk to 16-year-old me, she wouldn’t even think something like this would be possible, let alone anything anyone would want to read. She may believe it if the blog was on Tumblr, but she’d be shocked to realize it is one of the more consistent social media sites in 2024. Mostly, the younger me would be surprised that I took the leap to write professionally.
I always wrote personally, scribbling away in journals about boys I had crushes on or writing stories about a girl falling in love with a boy from her favorite band (I’ve always been a boy band fan!) in a new notebook. I never went further than that—until FBI Agent, music producer, and pediatric surgeon led to writer.
I didn’t realize that some things took time when I was younger, but I also thought 27 was old. With glorious hindsight, I can confidently say it’s never too late, and 27 is not old. As strange as it sounds, A Family Affair stirred all this up.
It also happened to align with the legions of TikTok videos on my For Your Page set to Billy Joel’s “Vienna” or women reminding other women to slow down and enjoy life because Carrie Bradshaw was 32 at the beginning of Sex and the City — and her story is still going to very interesting, to say the least, places on And Just Like That, which began when she was 55. In fairness, there is an equal measure of videos of women near my age trying out filters that “authentically age” them and spiraling about their SPF usage + other things. Life is about balance.
Life is also about being brave enough to open yourself up to new surprises. It means getting to know yourself after a tenured career as being one thing. It’s rediscovering your passion in all forms after losing someone who defined much of your life. It’s about taking a step back to appreciate the people in your life, see them as complete humans, and move forward with intentions to be better to them and for yourself. It’s about holding space for some love, laughter, and fun.
I like that A Family Affair reminded me of those things. I’m not ashamed to admit that I jotted down many of Kathy Bates’ character’s nuggets of wisdom. Before I tell you two, can we take a second to appreciate that Kathy Bates is in this movie?
Anyway, “Before I was Charlie’s mother, I was a young woman who wanted things for herself” and “We’re still everything we always were” are straightforward lines. Yet, they cut to the core of why I enjoyed A Family Affair. It reassured me that I don’t have to have everything figured out all the time as long as I try to stay true to myself. All my detours are leading me to where I need to be. I’m constantly evolving, growing, and learning in all the chapters life allows me, and you are, too.
And, sometimes, according to A Family Affair, a chapter can include falling in love with your daughter’s movie star boss. Anything is possible!
💌 Shelby
P.S. Thank you for showing up and reading this letter; here are the hilarious bloopers from A Family Affair.
Featured photo: A Family Affair key art, courtesy of Tina Rowden/Netflix.
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