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Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Things We Lost In The Fire (2007)

After her husband (David Duchovny) is murdered, his wife (Halle Berry) finds herself unable to grieve and invites her husband's best friend (Benicio Del Toro), a recovering heroin addict, to move in. But instead of the peace she had hoped to find, she resents his intrusion into her family's life. Directed by the Oscar winning Danish director Susanne Bier, this is a low key effective two character drama. There are other characters, of course, but the relationship between Berry's character, who uses this brittle veneer to hold herself together, with the almost child like Del Toro is the film's focus and strength. For the most part, Bier does a skillful job of retaining a sense of loss and the inner struggle to retain composure as one's world collapses. Del Toro and Berry both give delicate, exemplary performances. Bier isn't as fortunate with the child actors (Micah Berry and Alexis Llewellyn) who play the offspring of Berry and Duchovny and give unimaginative "movie kid" performances. With Alison Lohman, John Carroll Lynch and Omar Benson Miller.

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