FILM

a map of the world

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directed by

Scott Elliot

starring

Sigourney Weaver

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.

The experience in prison is where Alice deals with her harshest critics, women from the lowest levels of society who never had reason to trust her in the first place. In befriending these women and earning their respect, Alice gains a heightened level of independence and personal strength.

Through all these horrible events in Alice's life, her husband Howard (David Straithairn) does little to help. Although he cares about his children, he leaves most of the necessary child care duties to his wife, even after she endures the death of her friend's child. He urges Alice to focus on the daily routine, oblivious to the fact that her life is falling apart. There is a particularly striking scene when Howard is about to make love to his wife one night, and though she is unable emotionally to handle it, he still cannot comprehend the problems she is dealing with.

Men are portrayed as spiteful and unfeeling throughout the film. Theresa's husband, like Howard, is unable to understand Alice's intense anguish, and while Theresa and Alice eventually share their grief with each other in a very emotional scene, Theresa's husband is never able to offer forgiveness.

Elliot makes some curious directorial choice. Of the nine women in the prison, seven of them are black, and while the town's upper -middle class population seems to be completely white, a black woman and her child are the only individuals seen shopping in an urban thrift store. The racial make-up might be geographically and socio-economically correct, but the proportions in the film are noticeably awkward.

The film also provides a stark contrast between city and country. While urban areas are shown to be dirty, overcrowded and coldly oppressive, the country town where Alice and her family live through most of the film is portrayed as spacious and fresh. However, the truth about city and country life are shown to lie beneath the surface, as it is only in the isolated, insular town community that she could be so harshly accused of child abuse. When Alice and her family move to the city at the end of the film, it provides the independence and anonymity she needs in ways the country town could not.

Interestingly, the issue of false child abuse accusations has popped up often in the news recently, and situations similar to Alice's have occurred in several states, including in Massachusetts. This film helps shed light on the danger of mob-style abuse accusations although most individuals unfairly accused of such charges do not wind up as strong as Alice.

Sigourney Weaver's powerful performance provides the viewer with real insight into the nature of crises. And thus, the film's center lies not in societal issues, but within the tormented soul of one woman. Grade: A-