The Squid and the Whale (2005)

Plot Summary

In 1986, In Brooklyn, New York, the dysfunctional family of pseudo intellectuals composed by the university professor Bernard and the prominent writer Joan split. Bernard is a selfish, cheap and jealous decadent writer that rationalizes every attitude in his family and life and does not accept "philistines" - people that do not read books or watch movies, while the unfaithful Joan is growing as a writer and has no problems with "philistines". Their sons, the teenager Walt and the boy Frank, feel the separation and take side: Walt stays with Bernard, and Frank with Joan, and both are affected with abnormal behaviors. Frank drinks booze and smears with sperm the books in the library and a locker in the dress room of his school. The messed-up and insecure Walt uses Roger Water's song "Hey You" in a festival as if it was of his own, and breaks up with his girlfriend Sophie. Meanwhile Joan has an affair with Frank's tennis teacher Ivan and Bernard with his student Lili.

Release Date

USA

(Sundance Film Festival)

2005-01-24

Canada

(Toronto International Film Festival)

2005-09-13

USA

(New York Film Festival)

2005-09-26

Also Known As (A.K.A.)

The Squid and the Whale

(Original title)

Historias de familia

Argentina

The Squid and the Whale

Australia

Certification

Argentina

No data

Australia

No data

MA15+

Brazil

No data

Sensitive content guide

A woman mentions that she will lose her apartment unless she blows the superintendent.

A young boy masturbates in a library to a picture of a nude female chest by rubbing his crotch on the edge of a wooden bookshelf. We see him reach down in his pants, take the ejaculate out in his hand, and smear it across some books on a shelf. We see the ejaculate dripping from the books. In a separate scene, he rubs some on someone's locker, but the actual act of masturbation is not shown.

A young boy lays out a bra and panties on a bed and rolls a condom on, out of curiousity, but it is not shown.

A boy kisses a girl and we see their tongues moving back and forth.

A man and his two kids discuss their mother's affairs with other men a few times.

A scene from "Blue Velvet" shows Isabella Rosselini nude from the waist up very briefly and in a non-sexual way. Her breasts are fully exposed.

A teenage boy (and the camera) stares at a young woman's behind in her jeans. Later, the same boy stares at a woman's groin while she's sitting cross-legged in shorts. He leans forward and kisses her knee.

A man and a woman are implied to have been having sex.

A teenage boy wonders often whether he should sleep with his girlfriend or other girls. He talks to other teenagers about this, they suggest both. He also talks to his father about it several times.

A teen's girlfriend, seen in her bra, gives him a hand job, but this is only seen from upper waist and above. Her cleavage is exposed quite clearly, however. The teenager receiving the hand job begins to breathe heavily, then we hear him grunting as he twitches, implying that he had climaxed. After he finishes, she is seen rubbing a towel on her bed sheet, obviously to clean up his ejaculate. He asks her about what she's done with another guy.

A teenager tells another teenager that a certain girl would "move her pussy muscles" in just the right way, so you can blow your load in a few seconds.

When a boy knocks on his Dad's door and opens it, he sees his father trying to get a young woman significantly younger than him to perform oral sex on him.