Death of child or parent

Rabbit Hole.  (2010, MC-76)  The best thing I can say about John Cameron Mitchell’s adaptation of David Lindsay-Abair’s Pulitzer-winning play is that I had no sense of its being a filmed stage piece.  Carefully skirting grief-porn and restraining the wildness of his Hedwig and the Angry Inch persona, Mitchell relies on his actors to reveal emotion through indirection rather than bludgeoning, and leavens the proceedings with unexpected wit.  Aaron Eckhart and especially Nicole Kidman are excellent as a couple whose 4-year-old son was struck and killed by a car eight months before, each flailing to find the coping strategy that will work for him or her, but maybe not for them.  Diane Wiest as Kidman’s mother leads an effective supporting cast.  At a swift 92 minutes, the film does not wallow or browbeat, and while the setting lacks a tangible sense of reality (even in a grocery store aisle), the actors unfold the truth of their characters’ emotions and personalities.  Not exactly a film to lift one’s spirits, it does not punish the viewer but rewards attention.

The Father of My Children.  (2010, MC-76)  It’s no spoiler to say that at midpoint of this film, the father dies and the children grieve, three young daughters, each in her own way, and their mother in hers.  Mia Hansen-Love tells this story with such intimacy that you suspect it happened to her, and the father does turn out to be based on a well-known French film producer.  In the first half of the film his small independent operation comes under increasing pressure from all sides, as he suavely drives around while juggling two cellphones, to spend rushed but quality time with the delightful females of his family.  In the second half his family tries to pick up the pieces of his ruined life, in a film that gives equal weight to joy and sorrow, love and mortality.  It’s lively rather than deathly, and a sleeper on my best of the year list.