Snow Cake

What’s the Story?

Just released from prison, Alex (Alan Rickman) meets charmingly eccentric, purple-haired Vivienne (Emily Hampshire). An aspiring writer, Vivienne sees through Alex's tetchiness, even making him laugh briefly. But then a car accident (not Alex's fault) leaves her dead and him feeling emotionally liable. He heads off to Vivienne's house, where he meets her mother, Linda (Sigourney Weaver), a high-functioning autistic adult who stocks shelves in the local supermarket, loves jumping on her trampoline, and accepts Vivienne's death without question. Staying in town to help with the funeral arrangements, Alex comes to understand Linda's reaction. He also finds his own solace in Linda's neighbor, Maggie (Carrie-Anne Moss), a divorcee who's happy to have sex without commitment. When Alex realizes that Maggie is not, as Linda has asserted, a prostitute, he achieves another insight: Some ambiguities, which aren't understood by the black-or-white-thinking Linda, are worth savoring.

Is It Any Good?

The movie's many clichés tend to overwhelm its more interesting questions about the pressures of social connections and conventions. With too much plinky piano music and a scene that purports to show Linda's point of view as she dances with the dead Vivienne against an imaginary white background, SNOW CAKE is at once too obvious and too earnest.