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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/11/2007 : 11:41:11
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Things We Lost in the Fire wants you to like it and, like a kid showing off in a playground, keeps tugging at your sleeve to notice how good it is at this or that.
Not that director Susanne Bier isn't to be admired. She's a dab hand at letting pictures tell stories, though you do get a bit overburdened with her dependence on certain shots. Like some post-modern Sydney Furie her camera too often finds the great big close-up to no great story-telling advantage.
But my main quibble is with a script that doesn't make enough effort to add anything to a scenario we've seen a lot. I've got nothing against redemption; it's a great cinema theme. And the power of deep friendship as well as love to cauterize emotional wounds rings true. But there's nothing that makes This story sing out over others of the genre.
The acting's fine and in one case extraordinary. Halle Berry can handle everything except the predictable moment of grief-release. The two children have been guided to leave at the door even the remotest hint of cutesy - they're terrific. But the spotlight's on Del Toro. If like me you were knocked out by his Guns-R-Us gangster in The Usual Suspects, you'll have followed his journey which I've always felt develops in the way James Dean's might have.
Here he plays a recovering heroin addict and best friend since childhood of Berry's husband, Brian Burke - David Duchovny in another of his 'personable' roles. He's not only Mr Nice Guy, he's also a biz-whizz-kid and has draped his family in the finest suburbia has to offer. And he cares about people. Not only is he the only one who's stuck by his pal when everyone else - including Berry - wanted to write him off, he just can't help getting involved. If he sees a guy beating up on his wife in the street, he cannot walk on by, but must wade in to make sure she's okay. And as he talks the brute down and gets out his phone to call the ambulance ... bang, bang, he's shot dead. Hubby wasn't so calm after all.
By then, and I suppose to the script's credit, we know enough about the Burkes to feel something. Except for some reason, we really don't. We're still just watching. This is partly because the characters of Duchovny, Berry and Del Toro are drawn with a blurred brush. Lots of screen time yet sadly not enough depth.
But there's something else, and I'm guessing it's Bier, tugging at us to notice her. Now some films benefit from that distance, that demolition of the Brechtian wall.
But this story pleads for our involvement, otherwise what's the point of tracking the rest of the tale as - predictably - Del Toro and Berry cross paths and join forces toward redemption -- fighting his addiction, her emotional holding-back and fear.
To the story's credit, they don't follow the fairy-tale path, and you wind up glad of that. But it's too intellectual a realization.
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Edited by - BaftaBaby on 12/11/2007 11:41:37 |
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Things We Lost in the Fire - little spoilers
