A Map of the World

(USA)

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, so Alice gets hit with charges of sexual abuse. Weaver fuses steely sarcasm and an au naturel sensuality, and 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. Yet for all the plum acting, the film falters under Elliott's clunky direction; the script lords a disturbing class arrogance and pitches some unintentional eye-rollers, and in the end this potentially powerful Map charts a disappointingly crooked course.