Director/writer Tamara Jenkins' "The Savages" is a dark, brooding comedic drama about alienation, death and rebirth. Starring the fabulous Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as alienated adult siblings brought together to deal with their father's decline into dementia, you genuinely care for these flawed characters in a manner completely lacking in "Margot at the Wedding."

Estranged from their father and each other, Linney and Hoffman reluctantly reconnect as they try to decide what to do with the fact that their father needs some form of institutionalized care. In the process, they are both forced to reflect on the fact that they have been less than honest with themselves concerning their own existence.

In Linney's case, she is gradually selling herself out as she gallops toward middle age. Having an affair with her married landlord, she continually lies to herself and others as she seeks grants from various foundations to pursue her failed attempts to publish her plays. (In a devastating scene reminiscent of Sally Field petting her cat while making love to Burt Reynolds in "The End" (1978), she pets her landlord's dog while they engaged in intercourse.)

Hoffman, a college professor in Buffalo, is compromising himself for different reasons. In his case, he elects to allow his Polish girlfriend to leave the United States as her visa expires rather than make a genuine commitment and marry her. Both he and his sister are timid characters who are in the process of slipping into their own oblivion as surely as their father is doing.

However, the beauty of this film comes from the fact that brother and sister are forced to confront their own lies and self-delusions when they reunite. Required to stare at the person behind their emotional curtain, what they see is not a pretty sight.

Hoffman confronts his sister about her obvious lies concerning the alleged award of a Guggenheim Fellowship, and Linney calls her brother to task for his false bravado concerning the imminent departure of his lover. In particular, a scene where Linney quietly observes Hoffman's emotional breakdown after a phone conversation where he has clearly refused to do what was necessary to maintain his relationship is as moving as it is tender.

Hoffman's three performances this year clearly prove that he is one of the premiere actors in the cinema. There was his drug addicted swindler who decides to rob his parents' jewelry store in "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead"; his clever, impish rogue CIA agent in "Charlie Wilson's War", and now this stupendous performance as a middle age professor who is fighting to regain meaning in his own life as he helps his sister tend to a mortally ill father. One of the great pleasures in being a fan of the cinema is to be graced with the opportunity to watch an actor of this stature operate at the top of his game.

And while I can't give it away, the ending of this film was simply perfect. In a genuinely humane and realistic manner, both Linney and Hoffman decide to embrace life rather than continue to run from it. After all, as Hoffman told his sister as they quarreled about what to do with their father, "This is life, not therapy."