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Please note this is a region 2 DVD and will require a region 2 (Europe) or region Free DVD Player in order to play. Based on the true childhood experiences of Noah Baumbach and his brother, The Squid and the Whale tells the touching story of two young boys dealing with their parents' divorce in Brooklyn in the 1980s. In his third feature, director Noah Baumbach scores a triumph with an autobiographical coming-of-age story about a teenager whose writer-parents are divorcing. The father (Jeff Daniels) and mother (Laura Linney) duke it out in half-civilized, half-savage fashion, while their two sons adapt in different ways, shifting allegiances between parents. The film is squirmy-funny and nakedly honest about the rationalizations and compensatory snobbisms of artistic failure as well as the conflicted desires of adolescents for sex and status. In detailing bohemian-bourgeois life in brownstone Brooklyn, Baumbach is spot on. Everyone proceeds from good intentions and acts rather badly, in spite or because of their manifest intelligence. Fulfilling the best traditions of the American independent film, this quirky, wisely written feature explores the gulf between sexes, generations, art and commerce, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

Noah Baumbach writes and directs this off-beat comedy drama, based on his own experiences as a young boy growing up in the 1980s and trying to deal with his parents' divorce. Bernard (Jeff Daniels) is the father of an eccentric Brooklyn family who claims to have been a great novelist in his youth, but who has settled down to a teaching job in middle age. When his wife Joan (Laura Linney) discovers a writing talent of her own, her success makes Bernard jealous and splits the family apart, leaving their two young children to form new relationships with their separated parents.