You Can Count on Me (2000)

Synopsis: Acclaimed co-winner of the Grand Jury Prize and winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, You Can Count on Me is both a heartbreaking and heartwarming snapshot of family life. Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry Prescott (Mark Ruffalo) are sister and... Acclaimed co-winner of the Grand Jury Prize and winner of the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival, You Can Count on Me is both a heartbreaking and heartwarming snapshot of family life.

Sammy (Laura Linney) and Terry Prescott (Mark Ruffalo) are sister and brother who were raised in Scottsville, a small, quiet town in upstate New York. Orphaned as children, Sammy and Terry have remained close, even as they have led very different and separate lives. Sammy is a churchgoing single mother working in the local Scottsville bank and devoted to her 8-year-old son Rudy (Rory Culkin). Terry is a drifter moving from state to state working odd jobs, getting into trouble and occasionally landing in jail.

One tangible thing keeps them together: the family home left to them by their parents. When Terry comes to visit Sammy with the intention of borrowing money, this home soon becomes the meeting place for their hearts and minds as they struggle to reconcile their conflicting lives with the love that, for better or worse, irrevocably binds them together.

Although it is obvious at their first meeting that each sibling is uneasy with who the the other has become, it is not long before Terry's mere presence is cracking the veneer of Sammy's well-ordered existence. Similarly, notoriously irresponsible Terry is learning to straighten up because of the developing relationship with Sammy's son.

Now that her small-town exterior has been stripped away to reveal the passionate woman underneath, Sammy begins to push the limits of all her relationships and to reevaluate her own less-than-perfect life. This results in an affair with Brian (Matthew Broderick), her new boss at the bank, and a marriage proposal from her on-again, offagain boyfriend, Bob (Jon Tenney). Everyone is testing the volatile waters of this promising new family landscape... until a well-intentioned visit to Rudy's biological father turns disastrous.

In the end, each member of this modem family must learn to separate the kind of love that matters from the kind that does not. Ultimately, they try to put things right again through a simple exchange of the unspoken words:

"You can count on me."

You Can Count on Me is the directorial debut of Kenneth Lonergan, who also wrote the screenplay. John Hart, Larry Meistrich and Jeff Sharp produce; Martin Scorsese and Barbara De Fina executive produce. Cinematographer is Stephen Kazmierski, editor is Anne McCabe, production designer is Michael Shaw and costume designer is Melissa Toth. The film stars Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo, Rory Culkin, Matthew Broderick, Jon Tenney, J.Smith-Cameron and Kenneth Lonergan. [More]