I saw this as the "Opening Night Gala" at Windsor, Ontario's 2nd Annual Film Festival, and it's exactly the kind of film tailor made to open up a Canadian film festival. It has the virtue of being at least partially homegrown product, but it also has big stars Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver and Carrie-Anne Moss in it and is far more Hollywood/Awards-season ready than particularly weird or homespun. The people who only go to see this film and then call it a day, essentially, get to have their cake and eat it too, by supporting a small and locally made film that nevertheless hits many of the same feel-good buttons that they'd get from the multiplex. Rickman plays a depressed traveler en route to Winnipeg for reasons only eventually revealed who stops to pick up a cheerful young female hitchhiker. They bond, briefly, before the two are in a car accident that kills the girl. Rickman goes to her hometown to pay his respects to the girl's mother (Weaver), a "high functioning" autistic emotionally apathetic towards the loss. Rickman, feeling both guilty and compelled to grieve in the mother's place, ends up sticking around for the funeral and strikes up a relationship with a local woman (Moss).
Weaver is the big problem with the film, of course, not least of all because it is simply hard to accept one of our smartest actresses in the role. Mostly, though, she's cursed with having to play this character in a film that is not at all above using her to provide both cheap laughs and wisdom-of-the-innocent truisms. Needless to say, a far cry from Rain Man (or Mark Haddon's excellent novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, for that matter) on this topic, too often threatening to veer off into The Other Sister/I Am Sam/Radio territory.
Still, I have to admit that the film grew on me as it went on. The resolution of Rickman's issues are a little too neat, but he's excellent in the film, and I liked the early scenes between he and the hitchhiker enough that the appearance of Weaver's character wasn't quite enough to immediately kill all of the good will I had developed toward the film at that point. And while I remain suspicious of the film's motives in including the Weaver character, the film never manages to forget that it is really about Rickman and this young girl's death. I confess to being moved by the last third of the movie, particularly the funeral scenes, and the notion of mourning a random stranger in the place of someone who cannot properly do so is rather startlingly poignant. Quite uneven, but if this ever ends up getting wide release, you could do far, far worse for a night out at the movies.
Weaver is the big problem with the film, of course, not least of all because it is simply hard to accept one of our smartest actresses in the role. Mostly, though, she's cursed with having to play this character in a film that is not at all above using her to provide both cheap laughs and wisdom-of-the-innocent truisms. Needless to say, a far cry from Rain Man (or Mark Haddon's excellent novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time, for that matter) on this topic, too often threatening to veer off into The Other Sister/I Am Sam/Radio territory.
Still, I have to admit that the film grew on me as it went on. The resolution of Rickman's issues are a little too neat, but he's excellent in the film, and I liked the early scenes between he and the hitchhiker enough that the appearance of Weaver's character wasn't quite enough to immediately kill all of the good will I had developed toward the film at that point. And while I remain suspicious of the film's motives in including the Weaver character, the film never manages to forget that it is really about Rickman and this young girl's death. I confess to being moved by the last third of the movie, particularly the funeral scenes, and the notion of mourning a random stranger in the place of someone who cannot properly do so is rather startlingly poignant. Quite uneven, but if this ever ends up getting wide release, you could do far, far worse for a night out at the movies.