Film Feedback
New This WeekAround TownMusicFilmArtTheaterNews & FeaturesFood & DrinkAstrology
  HOME
NEW THIS WEEK
EDITORS' PICKS
LISTINGS
NEWS & FEATURES
MUSIC
FILM
ART
BOOKS
THEATER
DANCE
TELEVISION
FOOD & DRINK
ARCHIVES
LETTERS
PERSONALS
CLASSIFIEDS
ADULT
ASTROLOGY
PHOENIX FORUM DOWNLOAD MP3s

  E-Mail This Article to a Friend
MARION BRIDGE

Winner of the Best First Feature award at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival, this intimate, affecting effort from Canadian director Wiebke von Carolsfeld follows the newly sober Agnes, who leaves Toronto to return to her Nova Scotia home town, where her sisters Theresa (Rebecca Jenkins) and Louise (Stacy Smith) are caring for their dying mother (Marguerite McNeil). The relationship between the two stay-at-home sisters, one an uptight Christian who’s been dumped by her husband, the other a slacker who may or may not be a lesbian, is deftly acted and devoid of easy categorization. Carolsfeld directs with distinctive but unaffected lyricism, and the depressed rural town mirrors the women’s interior lives, but the star here is the luminous Molly Parker, whose most recent work includes her delicious guest appearances as a rabbi on HBO’s Six Feet Under. As a young woman struggling to come to terms with a traumatic past, a present tinged with denial, and an uncertain future, Parker is shaded, unsettling and ultimately triumphant. (90 minutes)

BY LOREN KING

Issue Date: April 17 - 24, 2003
Back to the Movies table of contents.
  E-Mail This Article to a Friend

home | feedback | about the phoenix | find the phoenix | advertising info | privacy policy | the masthead | work for us

 © 2003 Phoenix Media Communications Group