Snow Cake

Tight-lipped Englishman Alex (Alan Rickman) arrives in Northern Ontario on his way to meet the woman with whom he’s had a son. He’s bullied by a young hitch-hiker into giving her a ride to her hometown of Wawa. Plot point 1: a sudden accident leaves Alex stranded in snowbound Wawa. Here he meets Linda Freeman (Sigourney Weaver in one of the most daring roles of her career) an adult autistic, albeit a high-functioning one. He becomes increasingly involved with Linda’s life and with the community to which she feels complete indifference, in large part because of her condition. Snow Cake, chosen as the opening film at last year’s Berlin Film Festival, is a film about friendship, trust, snow, acceptance, obsessive behaviour, a dog called Marilyn, and about the power of friendship, no matter how eccentric, to change our lives. In the spirit of films such as Fargo, it is also a film about the ways in which people are marked not only by biology, but also by a sense of place. Music by Broken Social Scene.

A mesmerising bonfire of the vanities.

The Guardian