Family Affair

The filmmaking is rough and rather clumsy, but by ceding the floor to his open, highly articulate sisters, Mr. Colvard has created a fascinatingly raw study of ferociously wielded male power.

Great as it is, this is not a ticket buying kind of movie.

While Colvard's film is always queasily watchable, as with other voyeuristic entertainments that insist on making the private public, there's the sense that such matters may be better dealt with in-house-or in a courtroom-than writ large on a movie screen.

Far be it from us to deny the director his deserved catharsis or to dissuade someone from speaking out about abuse. Still, Family Affair feels less like a documentary than one man's filmed therapy marathon, to which you're voyeuristically privy in an oversharing-on-Oprah sort of way.

Chico Colvard's tragic documentary is blunt and rather artless, but it does make for impactful, and deeply disturbing, viewing.