Director: Susanne Bier, 15, 119min
Stars: Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro, David Duchovny
On general release
The Danish director Bier’s English-language debut is a turbulent melodrama; her stars, Berry and Del Toro, find themselves tossed on angry swells of drama. The film, like Bier’s previous pictures, is a superior soap characterised by acute emotions and first-rate acting.
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Composed of jagged fragments that gradually fit together into a story of bereavement, the film opens with a funeral. Berry plays Audrey, a distraught mother of two trying to make sense of the loss of her husband. She realises there’s someone missing from the funeral and sends her brother to fetch him. Jerry (Del Toro) is strung out on a filthy mattress strewn with syringes and a semiconscious junkie girl. The skin under his eyes is as ill-fitting and baggy as his threadbare suit. He’s in no state to say goodbye to his childhood friend. Whether the rest of the film works depends on whether you accept that Audrey, hoping for healing and closure, would invite Jerry – an addict and a man she dislikes and distrusts – into her family home. It’s quite a stretch, but Berry and Del Toro bring such conviction to their roles that we barely question their actions.