Writers Trailer (2012)

Trailer for Writers.

An acclaimed writer, his ex-wife and their teenaged children come to terms with the complexities of love in all its forms over the course of one tumultuous year in "Writers," the clever, funny, and touching tale of a fractured family trying to rediscover one another.

Novelist Bill Borgens (Greg Kinnear) has been struggling to keep it together since his wife Erica (Jennifer Connelly) left him for a younger man three years earlier. Instead of working on a new book, he obsesses about his ex, spies on her and her new husband while pretending to be jogging and insists that their 16­year-old son, Rusty, set a place at the Thanksgiving table for Erica every year, even though she never comes.

This Thanksgiving, their 19-year-old daughter Samantha comes home from college with momentous news: her first novel has been accepted for publication. Bill is both thrilled, since he has been raising both his children to be writers since birth, and chagrined, since she wrote the book without any help from him. But when he suggests that Sam share her good news with Erica, she balks, refusing to have anything to do with the woman she believes betrayed her father.

Deeply wounded by her mother’s departure, Sam has constructed a wall between herself and love. She pursues only one-night stands and uncommitted hookups to protect herself from being hurt. When her classmate Lou tries to initiate a real relationship with her, she ridicules him and leaves before she has to reveal that he has touched her. When Lou stops coming to the writing seminar they both attend, Sam tracks him down and follows him to the hospital where his mother lies dying. Not even cynical Sam can resist Lou’s gallantry in the face of tragedy.

Meanwhile, Rusty is just the kind of guy his sister abhors — romantic, needy and hoping to rescue a damsel in distress. He gets his chance when beautiful Kate, the secret crush he dedicates his poetry to, has a fight with her abusive boyfriend, and he steps in. Soon Rusty and Kate are inseparable, but he is so blinded by love that he is unable to see how seriously troubled she really is.

When Erica attends a launch event for Sam’s book, she is devastated by her daughter’s rejection. As the Borgens family reopens old wounds and inflicts some new ones, Kate spins out of control. It will take all of their considerable resources to save her, but they will have to put aside their grudges in order to do so.