The Ice Storm is a 1997 American independent comedy-drama, directed by Ang Lee and written by James Schamus, adapted from Rick Moody’s novel of the same name. It has just been re-released, and I managed to catch it last Friday at the BFI on the Southbank.

The Ice Storm is set in the small town of New Canaan, Connecticut, in 1973, where very little happens on the surface, but scratch just a little below, and the inhabitants are wallowing in the aftermath of the swinging sixties, which had somehow passed them by. We eavesdrop on the lives of two families, the Hoods and the Carvers, friends and neighbours and sometimes a little bit more than that. The Watergate scandal reaches its dramatic conclusion; Thanksgiving approaches; and an ice storm is stirring. The grown-ups try to lose themselves in joyless hedonism (including a hilarious ‘key party’) while their children emulate their behaviour in their own ways. This is a snapshot of a world undergoing a radical change in moral attitudes, particularly with regard to sex and drugs. Whilst it is hilarious at times, it is also a devastating portrait of family life in small-town America that is all-too relevant in the current climate of questionable moral values.

Ang Lee captures the spirit of the age perfectly and the ensemble cast, which includes Sigourney Weaver, Kevin Kline, and an eighteen-year-old Elijah Wood (in his thirteenth full-length picture) all put in tremendous performances, but it is the seventeen-year-old Christina Ricci (also in her thirteenth film) who steals the show for me. I saw her recently in Woody Allen’s Anything Else, and she was terrific in that too.

The Ice Storm is a really funny film, and if, like me, you missed the swinging sixties, it will show you why that was probably no bad thing. If you get the chance to catch this in the cinema, jump at it.