When a Hollywood star plays a mentally challenged character, there's always the danger that the acting takes over from them actually feeling the part. That way Oscars may beckon, but truth flies out of the window.
On the whole, though, Sigourney Weaver triumphs here as Linda, an obsessive-compulsive, autistic woman who lives in the little town of Wawa, in Canada.
She takes in Alex (Alan Rickman), a troubled stranger who tells her that her daughter has died in a car accident. There are, we discover, other mysteries in his life.
The two seem to need each other - even when Alex falls impossibly for an extrovert neighbour (Carrie-Anne Moss). Linda wants company, though she won't admit it, and he, though sometimes exasperated, is able to mask his guilt and grief in her presence.
Marc Evans, who made My Little Eye and Trauma, here tries his hand at more sensitive subject matter and more oblique emotions. It doesn't always work and there are dull patches, mostly due to somewhat flat direction.
But Rickman's quietly subtle performance and Weaver's well-researched approximation of autism, which is never afraid to provide laughs, paints the ultimately moving microcosm of a small world colliding with the tragedy of death and disappointed dreams.
Snow Cake
Cert: 15
