raina67

If you're looking for originality, this is not the film to see. The script is so predictable that my friend and I were literally able to guess the next lines in some scenes, and sometimes the dialogue is very movie-of-the-week. However, there are some standout performances among the cast.

Lynn Redgrave plays Celia, an eccentric old writer hashing out a manuscript on a manual typewriter in her home on a barren island. (Think "Old Rose" in Titanic) She meets Clare (Julia Brendler), a teenage girl who has recently lost her boyfriend in an accident and has been brought to the island by her mother Fiona (Alberta Watson), who just inherited a house there. Clare is very angry at life and her mother is at her wit's end about how to help her. She meets Celia and, out of boredom and a desire to stay far away from her mother's attempts to get her to talk, starts going to her house to listen to her tell the story she is writing up - a tale of a young girl who also lost her love in an accident many years earlier. As she narrates, we have flashback sequences of Celia's story with Kirsten Dunst and Trent Ford playing the lovers in that tale. The end result is that Clare is able to put aside her anger and deal with her grief.

Brendler, an unknown in North America, gives a solid performance as the furious-at-fate daughter, and she works well with always-stellar actresses Redgrave and Watson. Dunst is cute but her character isn't believable, making too many abrupt transitions from tomboyish prankster to fishing industry advocate to romantic heroine without any real explanation of just what motivates her (for instance, why does she care if it's fishing that supports the islanders, or some other business? Because she was born on a fish gutting table? This is never explained well.) Trent Ford is nice eye candy but needed more experience to pull off his role.

Our biggest gripe was the editing. This movie flashes back and forth from past to present more times than you can count, often so quickly it's like a bad MTV music video. Please, stop this person before they edit again.

Overall, a decent movie but nothing you haven't seen before. Worth watching for the performances of Brendler, Redgrave and Watson. We both think Brendler is going places and are interested to see what she chooses next.

Colleen Murphy seems to have two great talents. One is to write scripts that even the most jaded filmgoer won't find predictable, and the other is to find actors perfect for the characters she creates.

This is a story about Francis, who does some very bad things (I'll try not to spoil), and it would have been so easy to write the obvious tale of the people around him slowly finding out the horrible truth, and end it by having the Good Guys shoot down the Bad Guy in triumph (and rescue the Damsel in Distress). Uh-huh. Yawn. Thankfully, that doesn't happen here. Every character is three-dimensional, a mixture of good qualities, bad qualities, weaknesses and strengths. You end up feeling very sorry for Francis despite what he's done. I'm sure that alone will make some moviegoers very uncomfortable, but I thought it was very well-done and thought-provoking. Zach Bennett plays Francis and gives a terrific performance in a very difficult role that goes the range from charming and suave to insecure and scared to psychotic and out of control. Katja Riemann (Halley) plays his schoolteacher girlfriend, who, refreshingly, does not require being run over with the clue bus to figure out her boyfriend's hiding something. (Can you ever tell a woman wrote this script). Other standouts include the actress who played Francis' elderly, controlling and too-close-for-comfort mother and the actor who was Halley's eccentric but well-meaning father. Alberta Watson makes the most of a small part as a coffee shop owner who's as charmed by Francis's outward persona as every other woman in the film, and familiar face Graham Greene shows up as a p.i. searching for a missing girl. Overall, a very cleverly written and complex film that I'd highly recommend.