Snow Cake (2006)

“Alex” (Alan Rickman) is driving north towards Winnipeg when he encounters the young “Vivienne” (Emily Hampshire) and gives her a lift. She’s quite an entertaining co-passenger, but before they can get to know each other better their car ends up in a crash with an articulated lorry and she is toast. He is in shock, but still determines to track down her mother “Linda” (Sigourney Weaver) to convey his apologies and condolences. What he finds when he knocks on her door, though, is the last thing he expects. She is so terribly matter of fact about the accident, about his innocence in the whole affair and then politely closes the door. Luckily, he has a gift that she bought for her and that gets him into the house, offered some fairly unpleasantly sounding ‘erbal tea and presented to a lady who is clearly on the autistic scale somewhere. Her house is meticulously organised, she cleans throughly and even still sleeps in the bunk bed she has occupied since she was three. “Alex” offers to stick around and help her out, and gradually the two begin to establish a functioning relationship as the funeral approaches. The neighbours also offer their sympathies, but he is warned off “Maggie” (Carrie-Anne Moss) as she’s an hooker, apparently, and the local cop “Clyde” (James Allodi) isn’t so keen when he does actually start to befriend “Maggie” after taking the dog for a walk a few times. With the sad date fast approaching, all the characters are now given space to develop, to unveil their own individual demons and all against a backdrop of middle America in mourning. Rickman was always good at playing the laconic, sarcastic, persona and he does that well here - but he also brings quite a degree of humanity and compassion to his role, too. Moss, likewise, is on solid form and as for Weaver, well I think this might be her finest performance to date. She masters the role of a clever and entirely coherent woman living in a shell that’s partly of her own making and that is now exposed to a life without her daughter whom she found “very interesting”. There’s a lot of chemistry here, there’s precious little sentiment - I’m not sure the “l” word is used at all, and there are some lovely one-liners as the story progresses towards something we know is going to be inconclusive yet satisfying (so long as the bin men show up). It’s intimately photographed, and it’s very lack of cheesiness makes it quite a touching and personable story, well worth a watch.