David Straithairn

First Look Pictures

What would happen if the foundations of your life were destroyed? Things you thought were good about yourself become crimes. People who once relied on you suddenly lose their trust. How would you react? How do people react? Would you find strength within yourself and emerge from the experience a stronger person?

A Map of the World, the new release from writer and director Scott Elliott, explores the intricacies of all these questions. Alice, the lead character played by Sigourney Weaver, is a well-standing member of her community. A string of crises, however, push her to the edge, testing her strength and challenging her preconceptions.

Alice is the school nurse at the local elementary school. As the mother of two daughters herself, she has always cared about the school's children, but one day a particularly difficult child, Robbie, refuses to take his medicine and throws it back at her. In a moment of anger and frustration Alice loses control of her emotions and slaps the child across the face. As one might expect, this event remains sharply fixed in Alice's mind. Elliott uses several slow-motion flashbacks to effectively show the confusing memory interfering with Alice's concentration--eventually, she cannot manage these thoughts and one afternoon becomes a fateful turning point when she takes care of her children along with her friend Theresa's (Julianne Moore) three daughters.

Although it is not really Alice's fault, she loses track of Theresa's youngest daughter, who runs unaccompanied to the nearby lake and falls in trying to swim. When Alice eventually tracks the girl down, she is unconscious in the water and dies later that night. The traumatic event creates a difficult and emotional tension between Alice and Theresa, and also threatens the trust Alice needs to effectively care for the town's children as school nurse. That trust is broken completely when child abuse charges are leveled against Alice by Robbie's mother.

When Alice is taken to prison following the child abuse charges, she is forced to confront even more abuse. She finds herself forced to deal with women who committed truly awful crimes, including a teenager who killed her two daughters. The prisoners taunt her relentlessly as a child abuser, and she suffers great pain as a result. Yet she is eventually able to connect with many of the prisoners because she, like them, is a mother away from her children.