Movie Review: Snow Cake at the Toronto International Film Festival - Page 2

This turns into an arrangement wherein he agrees to stay for a week, to help plan the funeral, and to take out the trash on Tuesday. In that week, he falls for the woman next door (played by Carrie-Anne Moss), who he has mistaken for a prostitute, this being the only reason he initially allows himself to make a connection), and forms a friendship with the wounded Linda, one that is based on the fact that they each respect the other's boundaries, mostly.

Linda, as a high functioning autistic, is a metaphor for Alex in many ways. She doesn't need people. People frighten her. Disorder frightens her. When she asks if it is compulsory to cry at funerals, she is glad when Alex says it isn't, because she is not sure she will. In another scene, when Alex says “I know how you feel; I lost a son...” she protests. How could you possibly know how I feel, she says, when I don't even know most of the time? Though Linda is autistic, her struggle with emotions is a fundamentally human one.

Sigourney Weaver is mesmerizing as Linda. (And incredibly pretty in person.) Whether the portrait is accurate is something I cannot attest to, but the character is fascinating to watch. There is a sense that this a woman who is trying very hard to stay on the surface; on the surface, she can understand things. She knows to make tea for a guest, but not that the dog should be fed something other than a frozen banana. She knows that Alex isn't to blame for the accident, but she doesn't quite know what to do with the knowledge that Vivienne is completely gone. Both Alex and Linda are trapped within themselves, comfortable with the predictability of that arrangement; by the end, they are still insular, but they are aware of it, and they have challenged themselves, even if only temporarily.

Throughout the film, there are allusions to Alex's past. Why is he going to Winnipeg? What happened to his son? How did this seemingly controlled man kill someone? When the driver of the truck shows up on Linda's doorstep, we see the potential of Alex's rage, and we see his fear of it. He confronts the driver (played by Callum Keith Rennie), warns the driver to leave, and then Alex runs. He bolts away, clearly afraid of what his anger could do. Yet, by the film's end, having told the whole story to the not-prostitute next door, he is able to make a kind of peace with the driver, a man who is clearly as broken as he is.

Article Author: Bonnie

Bonnie writes about books every Thursday at Fourth-Rate Reader, about everything else at Signifying Nothing, and sometimes she resorts to pictures. She lives in Toronto.

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