A low-key holiday drama that's refreshing not only because it lacks the big discovery melodrama of most similar movies but because it's entirely believable.

This engrossing blend of humor and heartbreak only hints at the causes, from betrayal to child abuse, of this family's dysfunction. Hang on. Attention is richly rewarded.

The characters are sharply etched but the plot is made deliberately ambiguous, suggesting that family life is so emotionally intricate that no single story can contain or explain it.

It's a decorous film, conventionally well-made, but don't be fooled. Its emotional impact is considerable.

It's probably not the last word in WASP angst, but it's eloquent, witty, graceful and as sharp as can be.

Proficiently written and directed by newcomer Bart Freundlich, handsome pic brandishes traditional qualities in the areas of acting, character revelation and middlebrow seriousness, but operates within a familiar and narrow emotional range that provides little surprise or excitement.

Has spasms of silliness that thaw things out delightfully. Davis plays Vartan's girlfriend as an irrepressible, sexed-up brat, and gives every line a little hop, skip, and jump.

Stands as a wonderful ensemble piece not unlike Woody Allen's dramas "Interiors" and "September."

Less can sometimes be perceived as more, but in the case of The Myth of Fingerprints less is simply less.

Freundlich's problem is that he has made an essentially interesting movie that never seems brave enough to say what it really intends.

Has some good performances (Ms. Moore's ongoing snit is a terrifically sustained bit of glowering), but it only barely begins to knit its self-pitying characters into a credible family unit. They are oddballs with attitude.

The film has a kind of echo-filled emptiness to it that some will take as profundity and others as mere emptiness.

The first-rate cast is wasted serving up this melodramatic turkey.

An overly mannered film drowning in the symptoms of dysfunction but unable to tap the root causes of this WASPish clan's pain except in the most oblique and cursory ways. This might be Freundlich's point, considering this family deals with its problems through avoidance.