When a movie/play is about a sizable family gathering, you can count on early conversations being rife with exposition clearly mapping out their family tree. 

Usually, introductory dialogue will help explain who’s related to whom, and how: “Ok, they’re married, they’re siblings, they’re the parents,” etc. 

But the new movie Christmas Eve in Miller’s Point conceals this information, at least initially. The audience must glean for ourselves how the characters are related, based on their interpersonal interactions. 

Once clarified, how does this knowledge change our perception and conception of the family and their relationships? This withholding ultimately acts as a mirror of what each of us assumes familial relations look like, and how we project these assumptions onto behavioral appearances.