Rating of
2/4
Not Fully Realized
Franz Patrick - wrote on 05/10/08
I'm glad that Nicole Kidman still decides to appear in small films once in a while. Even though this is one of her less memorable small movies, it's interesting nonetheless because Kidman's character had some sort of intense complexity. She loves her son but she fails to show deep affection toward him (in fact, she outright insults him), she cares for her sister yet their relationship is troublesome at best (due to sibling rivalry), and her unstable marriage is always in the back of her mind which negatively affects everything else she does. These three factors are at the forefront of the story, which had equal focus most of the time. Still, what this film really lacks is some sort of a gratifying resolution, not for the audience, but for its characters. At the end, I got tired of how miserable the characters were because at least one of them deserves to be happy. That did not happen because I believe that the filmmakers tried to do something too different, which is to not have a glimmer of a happy ending. That particular cinematic risk backfires because the suffering of the characters felt pointless--without some sort of evolution or change, the story is not fully realized. I did not dislike this film. I simply cannot recommend it because it could have been so much more touching.
