SUSANNE BIER

Bil’s rating (out of 5):   BB.5. 

USA/United Kingdom, 2007.  DreamWorks, Neal Street Productions, Province of British Columbia Production Services Tax Credit.  Screenplay by Allan Loeb.  Cinematography by Tom Stern.  Produced by Sam Mendes, Sam Mercer.  Music by Johan Soderqvist.  Production Design by Richard Sherman.  Costume Design by Karen L. Matthews.  Film Editing by Pernille Bech Christensen, Bruce Cannon.  

Halle Berry loses husband David Duchovny in a street shooting and is left to keep house and raise their two children alone. A crazy emotional impetus points her towards his heroin-addicted best friend (Benicio Del Toro) as the glue to mend this family back together as she invites him to come stay in her guest house/garage and keep the memory of her husband alive. Susanne Bier’s Hollywood debut and follow-up to her Oscar-nominated After The Wedding enjoys many of the same advantages and suffers the same downsides as her previous effort: natural acting, excellent handling of emotional scenes, but an overindulgence in soap-operatic melodrama that never knows when to quit. Why anyone would allow a drug addict who’s been crawling the streets for junk near their children is beyond comprehension, though the actors do such good work with their characters that plot holes such as these are easily glossed over. It’s a film that’s all little moments, however, and as such becomes quite tiresome quickly. Lovely photography of Vancouver.