‘& Sons’ review: Bill Nighy’s disheveled alcoholic author heads intriguing family drama

Dir: Pablo Trapero. United Kingdom/Canada. 2025. 119mins

Pablo Trapero’s remorseful family drama & Sons, penned by Trapero and Sarah Polley (Women Talking), stars Bill Nighy as famed, reclusive novelist Andrew Dyer, who invites his estranged sons Richard (Johnny Flynn) and Jamie (George MacKay) to his country manor to share a secret involving their teenage half-brother Andy (Noah Jupe). A unique soft sci-fi twist on the ‘terrible dad tries to atone to his kids during the winter of life’ tale, it unfortunately doesn’t feature enough alterations to that narrative form to sustain its melodrama.  

Staunton provides grounding to a film with insufficient depth 

Debuting at Toronto before screening at London film festival, & Sons is Trapero’s English-language debut. A story about siblings reuniting due to the health of a parent, it recalls the Argentine director’s previous film The Quietude, which also played at Toronto. & Sons might appeal to those drawn to other bad dad movies like The Squid and the Whale or Nebraska. Having proved he could take the lead in a prestige film with 2022’s Living, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best actor, Nighy’s transformative performance in & Sons could make for an intriguing awards play. 

Based on David Gilbert’s novel of the same name, the film quickly establishes Dyer’s chaotic world. It begins with Andy breathlessly arriving home to inform his dad that one of his old friends has passed, and his friend’s widow has requested that Dyer deliver the eulogy. An alcoholic with a prescription drug addiction, Dyer is in no state to leave his comfortable manor, much less write. He spends most days blissed out on his couch listening to jazz records.

As Dyer, Nighy is nearly unrecognisable, trading his clean-shaven gentlemanly exterior for a disheveled, bearded look. Though he gets by, particularly with the help of Andy and their Swedish maid (Anna Geislerová), the retired author believes he’s dying. He requests that his other two sons come home. 

While both of Dyer’s returning sons hate him, they each need something from him. Richard arrives from New York City with his son, hoping to adapt his dad’s bestseller ’Saturn’s Salute’ into a movie. Jamie, who is a fine artist, wants to document his dad’s suffering for the perverse pleasure of displaying it. No matter their individual talents, neither Richard nor Jamie can exist outside of their father’s fame and legacy. Yet, that is not necessarily why they despise him; that stems from when he abandoned their mother Isabel (Imelda Staunton) 20 years previously for an extra-marital affair that produced Andy. Now, with Jamie and Richard’s return, Dyer claims he did not cheat on her. It was all a cover story. 

Trapero does not easily divulge whether Dyer is lying or not about Andy’s origins, but whether he is to be believed is beside the point. & Sons is about whether it’s possible to break the toxic cycles parents create for their children. Richard is five years sober after being a drunkard like his father, while Jamie shares his cold dedication to his art. These examples naturally cause Andy—who occupies his dad’s former room and wears his vintage clothes—to fear he will turn out exactly like his dad, so he searches for ways to escape his influence. Flynn, MacKay and Jupe all give shape to characters whose anxiousness and insecurities are internalized rather than externalized. Their work, while admirable, is not enough to make these characters feel unique to this movie.

In fact, the best thing about & Sons is Staunton. She provides grounding to a film with a lot of screaming and drunkenness but insufficient depth. The film lacks the ability to translate the human toll of living with a selfish megalomaniac like Dyer into affecting answers that reveal any truths about us or these people. Staunton is the only actor who finds enough space to sketch out a rich inner life for her character, imbuing Trapero’s volatile picture with an emotional tangibility that struggles to sufficiently overcome the film’s broadness.