Halle Berry follows up the extremely disappointing Perfect Stranger with Things We Lost in the Fire. She is teamed with fellow Academy Award winner Benicio Del Toro in this serious drama that the studio surely hopes will garner some Oscar recognition.
Halle plays Audrey, a recently widowed mother of a two, a son named Dory and a daughter named Harper. Her husband, played by David Duchovny, was murdered helping to protect a woman who was being beaten by her husband. Benicio plays Jerry, Aubrey’s husband’s good friend, who has been battling a Heroin addiction. Through flashbacks we see that he would visit Jerry, against Audrey’s wishes, to treat him to dinner and spend time with him. For reasons that never became quite clear to me, Audrey invites Jerry to come live in one of their garages, which had been turned into a guest room. Jerry is determined to honor his friend by staying clean of Heroin. He begins to study real estate and becomes close with Audrey’s kids. Audrey is having a lot of difficulty adjusting to life without her husband. She can be charming one minute, and then snap the very next. Jerry ends up having to prevent Audrey from experimenting with drugs in order to help her cope. As the story moves along we see more flashbacks to show us what a wonderful marriage Audrey had, and what a great guy her husband was.
Eventually, Audrey goes off on Jerry once again for no good reason, and tells him to get out. This leads to his relapse. Aubrey goes to find him, and with the help of her brother and another former addict, they lock him in his room and force him to go through withdrawal. The two of them have serious issues, but they must figure out how to co-exist and provide a stable environment for the two kids, who desperately want Jerry around as a father figure.
Both Halle and Benicio were surely attracted to this movie because the roles give them a chance to really act. Halle has the opportunity to show the complete range of emotions as Audrey, and Benicio really sinks his teeth into portraying the ups and downs of drug addiction. The problem is that the story is only mildly compelling. The movie is almost 2 hours long, and I was bored at times. I don’t like the title of the film, or the feeble attempt at explaining the title. Something was missing in the character development, as I never cared about the characters as much as I should have. There is one unnecessary scene in which Aubrey asks Jerry to help her sleep by coming to bed with her and rubbing her ear, like her husband used to, while she hugs up against them. Now, Halle tries to downplay her beauty in this movie, but the audience couldn’t help but laugh knowing what would happen if a guy was hugged up in the bed with Halle Berry. The acting is top notch, but you can wait for the DVD on this one.
1 comment:
Good post.
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