A family weekend is fraught with emotional landmines for mercurial and sensitive Lynn (Barkin) as she arrives at her parents' Annapolis estate for the marriage of her estranged eldest son Dylan (Michael Nardelli), accompanied by her three younger children (Ezra Miller, Kate Bosworth, Daniel Yelsky). Lynn's hopes for a joyful reunion are crushed as her wry but troubled middle son Elliot (Ezra Miller) lobs verbal grenades at his mother and her relatives while daughter Alice (Kate Bosworth), a fights valiantly to keep her longtime demons under control. The weekend quickly unravels as Lynn demands to be heard by her aloof, disdainful mother (Ellen Burstyn), ailing, distant father (George Kennedy) and ever-judgmental sisters (Siobhan Fallon, Diana Scarwid), but most especially by her ex-husband Paul (Thomas Hayden Church) and his hot-tempered second wife Patty (Demi Moore). Confronted with the deeply painful, half-buried truths that have given rise to the family's primal web ofresentments ...

Dresses, lipsticks, sex - the "perversions" (and neuroses) of Eve, a young, very successful lawyer. Her days are a tightrope act between extreme eloquence and frosty toughness on the one side, and scaring vulnerability on the other. The climax of her career shall be the possibly forthcoming appointment as a judge, but this step seems to be interrupted by her kleptomanian sister Mad who is arrested after one of her raids. Eve travels to Mad's town to stand by her in the jail. Their struggle about Mad's illness evokes suppressed conflicts. Eve stays at her sister's flat where she meets a girl that fights with its budding femininity.