The Kids Are All Right found an appreciative audience this summer with its combination of today’s nuclear family mixed with a slightly farcical romantic sub-plot. Annette Bening and Julianne Moore are a lesbian couple with two well-adjusted teens. Both of their kids were birthed using the same anonymous sperm donor, a few years apart.

Now that the eldest Joni (Mia Wasikawska) is months from college she wants to find out about her biological father (Mark Ruffalo).

“I didn’t write the script with someone in mind,” Kids’ writer director Lisa Cholodenko tells Free Press Houston on the eve of the movie’s release on DVD. “I wasn’t working with the kind of budget that would allow me a lot of rehearsal time,” reasons Cholodenko. “Having the right actor is important.” Wasikawska had just finishing filming her role as Alice in Wonderland.

The Kids Are All Right was shot in “23 long days.” The film mirrors events in Cholodenko’s own life. The script was developed over five years. “I wrote to find organic moments in the life of the story,” Cholodenko concludes.

Bening and Moore, as well as Ruffalo, give brilliant performances, finding at times a profound depth to the characters Cholodenko created.

- Michael Bergeron