Starring Sigourney Weaver, Alan Rickman. Written by Angela Pell. Directed by Marc Evans. (14A) 112 min. Opens Dec 15.
Snow Cake is moviemaking as internecine conflict, its screenwriter
blithely setting traps for the actors to avoid. Luckily, Sigourney
Weaver and Alan Rickman prove themselves to be nimble steppers. Their
fine work goes a long way towards elevating the material.
At first, it seems as if Rickman is merely giving his usual
good grump as Alex, a guarded ex-con driving across Canada en route to
some ambiguous reconciliation. Against his better judgment, he picks up
a kooky hitchhiker (Emily Hampshire) and no sooner has she giddily
encouraged him to lower his defenses than a truck plows into the car,
killing the girl instantly and leaving Alex guilt-stricken and stranded
in Wawa, Ont.
Alex's first impulse is to journey to the girl's home and
apologize to her mother, except that Linda (Weaver) isn't much for
apologies; she's a high-functioning autistic woman who's less shaken by
the news of her daughter's death than by the fact that Alex forgets to
remove his shoes at the door. She's certainly not thrilled when he
decides to stay - in its better moments, Snow Cake renders this addled
domestic impasse as a strangled comedy of manners. The script
occasionally strains to equate Linda's snarly impenetrability with a
state of grace, but Weaver's tense, terse performance steamrolls over
the sentimentality. Rickman, meanwhile, modulates Alex's responses to
his new hostess so finely that he almost hijacks the film from his
tour-de-forcing co-star.