Contrary to first impressions, this slow-burning two-hour melodrama isn’t based on a best-selling beneficiary of Oprah’s Book Club, but it certainly begins like a badly-adapted novel. In fact, this tear-jerking ode to family life is the result of an original screenplay by Allan Loeb, so most of the blame for its early woes must be aimed at the dizzying jump cuts of Danish director Susanne Bier, as she tries to cover around 35-years of back story in the film’s first 15 minutes.
David Duchovny plays smart, sophisticated architect Steven, the perfect father to two adorable kids, and ideal husband to impeccably beautiful stay-at-home mum, Audrey (Halle Berry). However, when you see father and son sharing a tender moment at their neighbour’s swimming pool (“What does fluorescent mean, dad?” “Lit from within, son”. “Like me?” “Like you.”) you know that tragedy is mere minutes away.
Things then take a turn for the kinky when, in a defiant act of self-flagellation, Audrey makes pains to befriend Steven’s childhood friend, Jerry (Benicio Del Toro). Jerry’s a former lawyer turned boggle-eyed smack addict whom she’s loathed for decades, but he’s also a unique link to the past that has been so unfairly wrenched from her. Audrey rocks up at his doss house, then at the hospital where he works as a janitor, and then, in what seems like self-punishment of the most sordid kind, asks him to move in with her. She even crawls up to him at night and begs him to hold her “like Steven did” until she falls asleep.
Their mixed-up relationship stretches the bounds of sense – would a straight-laced, middle-class mum really let a strung-out junkie live with her two young kids? But the cast work hard to ground this suburban fairy-tale in reality. A barnstorming turn from Del Toro sets this gushy tale apart from lesser melodramas, while Halle Berry’s tear and mucus ducts earn their fat star salary.
