The Sweet Hereafter

A Phoenix pick

From Family Viewing to Exotica, Atom Egoyan's directorial project has been to measure the gulf between the heart and the head, his coldly formalist approach to narrative always favoring the latter. Here he gravitates toward the other pole with a film so palpably mournful that its wintry images seem to drip tears.

The Sweet Hereafter (which was the deserving Palme d'Or runner-up at Cannes) adapts the Russell Banks novel in its tale of family turmoil dredged up and laid bare, as a repressed big-city lawyer (Ian Holm) swoops into a small town in British Columbia to seek settlements for the grieving parents of 14 children who died in a bus accident. He attempts to explain the crash (and assuage the town's grief) by targeting convenient scapegoats; meanwhile Egoyan's typically complex narrative makes a jigsaw of interlocking passions and personal histories, one piece being that Holm's character has loved and lost one of his own brood. At Cannes, Egoyan was criticized by some for failing to tie up thematic loose ends, but I'd say that's just part of his ambitious bid to make his oeuvre a little messier and more true to life. Screens at the Copley Place Tuesday the 16th at 7:30 p.m. Director Atom Egoyan will appear before the screening.

-- Rob Nelson

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