THE SQUID AND THE WHALE (2005). Noah Baumbach's autobiographical film is set in Park Slope, Brooklyn, in 1986, where Walt (Jesse Eisenberg), from whose point of view Baumbach tells the story, and younger brother Frank (Owen Kline) learn that their mom Joan (Laura Linney) and dad (Jeff Daniels) are splitting and shunting them back and forth. As this arrangement deteriorates, infidelities will take place and be disclosed, a writing student (Anna Paquin) will offer bemused comfort to Bernard and Walt, and Ivan (William Baldwin), the parents' charming but vaguely unwholesome tennis pro, will hover in the background. The difference between this and other films about broken homes lies in the details, the performances, the exquisite restraint, the sad, precise, hilarious dialogue. Shot in grainy 16mm and fluidly cut, The Squid and the Whale adheres to the purity of the best of the New Wave as embodied by The Mother and the Whore poster on Walt's wall. Rather than impose meaning on experience, Baumbach allows it to form its own epiphanies, and they are as deep and freaky as the beasts of the title. (88m)

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