Carefully drawn family portrait in a rough, grainy, indifferent image, a “nontraditional” family let’s swiftly say: two lesbian “Moms” or “Momses” with a biological son and daughter old enough to be curious as to the identity of their sperm-donor dad, who turns out to be a health-food restaurateur and organic gardener stuck in a sort of Sixties time warp: “Right on, right on. Cool. I love lesbians.” There is perhaps a whiff of self-consciousness in the initial laying-out of the family dynamic, but that’s not as egregious as the audience-consciousness of the plotty pot-stirring, the salacious lip-smacking, whereby the same-sex parents worry about the company their son keeps and wonder whether he’s gay, and whereby, much worse, one of them succumbs to heterosexual temptation with, of all people, the laid-back sperm donor. All of the characters are nevertheless human and likable, even the one, believe it or not, played by Mark Ruffalo, even the teenagers, Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson. Director and co-writer Lisa Cholodenko shows a keen ear for modern talk and vogue vocabulary (“eco-friendly,” “micromanaging,” “counterintuitive,” “composting,” “heirloom tomatoes,” “acai,” etc.), and, assuming she knows what she’s talking about, it’s educational to learn why a lesbian couple would keep handy a DVD of gay male porn. Then too, whatever the contrivances, we get to watch two supremely skilled actresses at work, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore. (2010) — Duncan Shepherd