Strong performances from Alan Rickman and Sigourney Weaver elevate a mostly mawkish pic above its Sundance quirky melodrama of the week origins to arrive at a film that contains some subtle, genuine moments.
Alan Rickman, capitalizing yet again on his laconic dry humor and his seemingly perpetual inherent sadness, anchors the film right away as Alex Hughes, a well-dressed and groomed man driving across Canada to Winnipeg for undisclosed business – most likely having to do with the picture of his son that he so nervously clutches while driving.
Stopping off at a truck stop diner, he meets up with Vivienne (Emily Hampshire), a happy go lucky young gal with great insight on life, a girl that would give Ruth Gordon a run for her money in ‘Harold & Maude’. Hughes makes it clear he’s not the chatty type, but she plays on his sympathies enough to let her hitch a ride. A few scenes and knowing conversations later, and the plot splits off into a attempted journey of forgiveness and guilt.
Alex Hughes arrives at the home of Vivienne’s mother Linda (Weaver), where he finds a highly-functioning autistic woman who had made a home for herself but not without a little help from her daughter who was living with her. Hughes, guilt-ridden and sympathetic, finds himself in a situation where he has no choice but to stick around with her for a few days as there are certain tasks that she will be unable to manage, like walking Vivienne’s dog that Linda dislikes and is perfectly content to throw a banana at each day for food.
Meanwhile, he meets up with and starts a tender affair with Linda’s neighbor Maggie (Carrie Ann-Moss), a subplot that is well acted but not necessarily essential to the main thrust of the story.
I suppose the writer thought that the disjointed, awkward conversations between Alex and Linda would not be enough to keep an audience’s attention. All of this main narrative runs parallel to the dark secrets of Alex’s past which they save for the less than surprising conclusion.
Like ‘I Am Sam’, ‘The Other Sister’, ‘Molly’ and so on, it’s usually quite hard to take a film like this with any sincerity as usually its just a tepid exercise in ham-fisted, showboating – as Pauline Kael famously said of Dustin Hoffman in ‘Rain Man’: he’s just hammering away at one note on the piano. That being said, and while this film certainly has its contrivances, Weaver approaches the role with just the right note…even if it is one note.
The treacle is kept to a minimum although I probably could have done with one less shot of Weaver frolicking around in the snow for no reason, which is not to say that I don’t buy these actions as genuine autistic antics, more that I just don’t want to see them at a constant rate.
The honest representation of autism comes from the fact of Angel Pell’s first screenplay being written from her own bittersweet experiences raising an autistic child, a fact that probably gives her no shortage of memories to draw upon.
I think films keep coming back to autism as it’s an infliction with an interesting dichotomy – a constant stream of sadness and happiness, laughter and anger - emotions that can change with a flip of a switch. That, of course, provides a very pleasing gamut of emotions and tonal differences to play out in a film and with an actor.
Director Mark Evans, fresh from a couple of low-budget horror films ‘My Little Eye’ and ‘Trauma’, provides a discerning eye here, who smartly focuses on the actors and the seldom used locations of Canada surrounding the Great Lakes. Filling the screen with a small town, winter wonderland vibe, enough scenes are taken outside to become visually interesting if the dialogue perhaps is not.
The film is presented in widescreen and is enhanced for widescreen televisions. Slim special features contain a handful of deleted scenes and the film’s theatrical trailer.
A film worth checking out for the performances and locations alone, the screenplay has the odd stumble but being a Rickman fan and liking a lot of the genuine moments the film produces allows me to give this one a slight recommendation.
Snow Cake is now available at Amazon and AmazonUK . Visit the DVD database for more information.
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