Things We Lost in the Fire
Studio: Paramount
Rated: R
Cast: Benicio Del Toro, Halle Berry
Director: Susanne Bier
WorkNameSort: Things We Lost in the Fire
Our Rating: 2.50
There’s a fine line between a healthy auterism – the artistic value of recurring themes and all that – and a regurgitation of your own material, and Things We Lost in the Fire too often crosses into the latter. It makes you wonder if Danish director Susanne Bier will ever get a fresh idea. Like After the Wedding, which was like Brothers, which was like Open Hearts, Bier’s English-language debut is about a woman, Audrey (Halle Berry) who, after her husband dies seeks the comfort of another man (Benicio Del Toro) to fill her new emotional and domestic void. Only this time Del Toro’s Jerry is a heroin addict, inserting drugs into the tired Bier paradigm. There are some wonderful moments, like when Jerry gradually adopts paternal habits around Audrey’s adorable children and when Audrey coaxes Jerry to stroke her earlobe to end her insomnia. And there’s a natural humor in Allan Loeb’s script that’s largely lost in Bier’s austere, Dogme-inspired Danish dramas. But Bier’s meditation on guilt, redemption, coping and addiction feels so much like old hat that it doesn’t carry the weight to which it aspires.
This article appears in Oct 17-23, 2007.