A Map of the World

As Aliens star Sigourney Weaver learns in Scott Elliott's restrained but ragged adaptation of the Jane Hamilton novel, battling extraterrestrials is nothing compared to small-town Wisconsinites. Here the statuesque actress plays Alice Goodwin, a blunt-spoken mom who finds her rural community morphing into 17th-century Salem when the daughter of her best pal (Julianne Moore) drowns on her farm. But a dead child isn't tragedy enough for this bad-mother melodrama: Alice, eaten alive by guilt and on the brink of breakdown, gets hit with charges of sexual abuse.

For a first-timer, Broadway wunderkind Elliott has convened an unusually pedigreed cast. Weaver fuses steely sarcasm and an au naturel sensuality that, to her credit, raise Alice above victim status. She's joined by theater stalwarts David Strathairn as her ball-busted husband and Arliss Howard as her swaggering lawyer, both of whom hold their own next to Weaver's tight-lipped indomitability. Yet for all the plum acting, the film falters under Elliott's clunky direction; the script, too, lords a disturbing class arrogance and pitches some unintentional eye-rollers, such as when the steadfast Moore, whose recent outings rival the Atlantic in saltwater production, blubbers, "It's amazing how much a person can cry." Just as amazing is how this potentially powerful Map can chart such a crooked course.

-- Alicia Potter