Cinema: One Man's Families

The Climax. The father-to-be nervously paces the hospital corridor, demanding reassurance from doctors and nurses about the coming birth of his child. Surely, the audience decides, it must be his first. But there he is in a phone booth, being fatherly to a family of two young daughters, a 17-year-old boy and pretty brunette wife. He sends them off on a seaside vacation, and there he is on the phone again, talking to another family of two young boys and a pretty blonde mother.

So much domestic bliss would be hard on any man. For...