'A Family Affair' skips sleaze for real romance

“Show, don’t tell.” It’s the hallmark of an effective writer, especially of fiction.

Over the past ten years, television has become unwatchable. It isn’t just the woke shibboleths hamfistedly thrust into dialogue where they have no natural place, nor the casting gymnastics meant to accommodate Hollywood’s boilerplate racial and gender creed — though those things do remain.

'A Family Affair' is surprisingly self-aware for a movie about people in Hollywood written and produced by people in Hollywood. Each character’s narcissism is a punchline at some point or another.

No, I’m talking about the fact that just about every show you could stream right now includes truly gratuitous sex scenes. For instance: "Outlander" had come highly recommended on account of an interesting storyline. Imagine my shock when the first season concluded with a gay rape scene, complete with blood and full frontal nudity.

When did everything become 1998 HBO but without the barely redeeming quality of interesting writing?

Gratuitous sex scenes are a great example of telling rather than showing, despite the fact that they show everything. The artless, sense-degrading spectacle of heaving haunches leaves little room for our imagination and much less for our humanity, instead activating our most lizardlike impulses, narrowing and lowering the mind. This is the exact opposite of what good art is meant to do.

Porn kills romance. Against all odds, it seems some writers are waking up to this fact. One recent release on Netflix surprised me by the wholesomeness with which it told a story that was nonetheless sophisticated and aimed at adults.

Directed by veteran helmer Richard LaGravenese, "A Family Affair" stars Zac Efron (36) as vain and vacuous action movie star Chris Cole and Joey King as Zara, his long-suffering personal assistant. Zara is a zoomer who hopes to get ahead in the movie business, but for now finds herself stuck in a busy yet low-status role.

When Efron’s character comes to her home to apologize for some misbehavior, he finds her mother instead, writer and widow Brooke, played by Nicole Kidman (57). They hit it off sweetly and sincerely — not in the hackneyed cougar-meets-prey way you might imagine.

Zara, naturally, opposes the relationship — both for its inherent awkwardness (for her, at least) and for the damage it could to her career prospects. Mostly predictable hijinks, misunderstandings, fights, and reconciliations follow.

The movie is cute, and it doesn’t indulge the explicit sexual imagery or messaging I’ve just mentioned, at least not to the degree that so many movies now do as a matter of course.

Brooke and Chris, caught in the moment of their chemistry, do rush into bed, but when their dalliance is intercepted by Zara, the cliche “it was just sex” is betrayed and turned on its head by their clearly burgeoning mutual love, which turns out to be sincere, against all odds.

It’s also surprisingly self-aware for a movie about people in Hollywood written and produced by people in Hollywood. Each character’s narcissism is a punchline at some point or another. After Cole says something that mildly contradicts current gender orthodoxy, he worries aloud to Zara that it will get him "canceled." The moment as Efron plays it is candid, self-effacing, and surprisingly funny.

Another pleasant surprise: that a breezy romantic comedy could handle grief with delicacy and concision. Kidman’s character was widowed by a man who wanted a divorce, and their daughter lionizes him in retrospect. The fear, anguish, and mixed feelings that the situation brings up are written and acted with impressive subtlety.

If the only vacation destination you get to this year is your couch, you could do worse than to let this pleasant summer breeze of a romantic comedy take you away.