THINGS WE LOST IN THE FIRE

Susan Bier Written by: Allan Loeb Starring: Halle Berry, Benicio Del Toro, David Duchovny, Alexis Llewellyn, Micah Berry, John Caroll Lynch, Alison Lohman Distributed by Dreamworks Pictures Film is released in the U.K. on Jan 4th, 2008. Review by Michael Edwards

rating: 3

Susan Bier's first English language film tells a somewhat manufactured but nonetheless moving tale of coping with loss and addiction, and has met with some mixed responses from the critics in the States. It tells the story of widowed mother of two Audrey Burke (Halle Berry) who is struggling to cope with her loss, and impulsively decides to take in her late husband's friend and recovering heroin addict Jerry Sunborne (Benicio Del Toro) and help him on the road to recovery. But the family dynamic twists and turns through their grief and loss, and undertones of escapism interweave with the narrative creating a fulfilling microcosm of the immediate aftermath of tragedy. The beginning of the movie depicts loving and devoted husband/friend Brian Burke (David Duchovny) going about his daily life of running a business, loving his wife, nurturing his kids, remembering the birthday of his less fortunate friend and genuinely being an all-round great guy. His tragic shooting, which occurred as he tried to protect a young woman from being beaten by her husband, came as no shock whatsoever and had me wincing in my seat. If anyone failed to predict his imminent death from his saintly portrayal in the first ten minutes then they surely must have never watched a film before. More than this, the focus on Audrey and Jerry left us with no ambiguity as to whose grief-stricken trials the narrative would follow. In fact, taken as a whole there were various plot turns that were well-worn and moments that were so inevitable that some people in the audience, including myself, actually laughed! Contrived is certainly the word, and it is what has turned some critics against this film. However, once the aggressively scripted set up was left behind and my tension had waned I felt that the film managed to settle into a far better pace, allowing moments of memory and emotion to work their way out as the scenario unfolds. These moments are not the dramatic twists (a couple of which are also visible long before they erupt) or in moments of re-integration to 'normality' through convenient and bland tertiary characters, but rather in the small things which really grate in times of distress. The real strength of this movie is that it has been directed with a keen eye for detail and a knack for packing a punch through often imperceptible methods. And, mercifully, the cute children are not deployed too frequently as manipulative emotional devices either! It is quite clear from the handling of the heart-wrenching scenes where the absence of a loved-one is most keenly felt that she drew a lot of directorial savvy from her flirtation with the Dogme 95 movement, and it should now be firmly established as a director who is more than capable of wordlessly conveying complex and difficult emotion. Heaps of emotion, longing, glances and sensual close-ups, combined with predictably strong performances from the likes of Berry and Del Toro, make this your standard Oscar nomination material. Despite it's all-too-easy categorisation and formulaic structure, which I think amount to playing it safe to avoid being seen as an 'art' rather than a 'mainstream' film, Things We Lost in the Fire is a gently effective tear-jerker whose impact lies not in a clever scenario or assertive moral debate (recently popularised again by Paul Haggis) but rather in its ability to visually capture the raw emotion that reverberates through many lives after a tragedy.