Genre: Drama
Director: John Cameron Mitchell
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart
8881/2
Becca (Nicole Kidman) isn’t coping with the car-accident death eight months ago of her young son Danny, and who says she should?
Just about everybody. Her practical husband Howie (Aaron Eckhart) wants Becca to resume living by attending group sessions with other bereaved parents.
Becca’s sturdy mother Nat (Dianne Wiest) reminds her daughter that she also lost a son, Becca’s brother Arthur, and she got over it.
Then there’s Becca’s sister Izzy (Tammy Blanchard), who has repeatedly screwed up her life, yet is delighted to discover she’s pregnant. Why can’t Becca just be happy for her?
And so it goes in Rabbit Hole, a perceptive and sympathetic film by John Cameron Mitchell that looks at grief by way of selfish reasonableness.
The movie is a mature statement by Mitchell, whose previous films Shortbus and Hedwig and the Angry Inch took sex as life’s major preoccupation.
Rabbit Hole sees a world that is trying to be ordered and nice — but as Kidman’s Oscar-nominated Becca curtly observes, “Things aren’t nice anymore.”
Extras include a director’s commentary and deleted scenes.
