Rabbit Hole

"Things aren't nice anymore!"
—Nicole Kidman as Becca in Rabbit Hole

Grief is a messy, profoundly isolating emotion. It can explode in agonizing hysteria or quietly roil beneath the surface, eroding a person's capacity for joy and interpersonal connection. John Cameron Mitchell's carefully directed Rabbit Hole knows this, as it delicately probes at the sorrow, resentment and powerlessness that consumes those left in the wake of tragedy.

A cynic might conclude that a movie that dwells on the emotional aftermath of a child's death is just another example of year-end Oscar baiting, especially given Nicole Kidman's participation as both executive producer and star. And that's most likely why David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning play was adapted for the screen. But in choosing Mitchell to helm the picture, Kidman has found a careful and sensitive filmmaker committed to painting an understated and empathetic portrait of what happens to a couple as they deal with the worst kind of loss.

Becca (Kidman) has landed a husband — Howie (Aaron Eckhart) — who provides her with a Mercedes and the kind of kitchen that makes foodies drool (she can wield a brûlée blowtorch like a pro). Still, something's off. The couple seems to be drifting apart in that perfectly manicured home. When Becca's unmarried, blue-collar sister Izzy (Tammy Blanchard) announces that she's pregnant, bitter family tensions begin to surface. You see, it's only been eight months since the accidental death of Becca's 4-year-old son. Since then, grief has driven some friends away, visits to a support group for the parents of dead children has deepened Becca's anger (she calls them "professional wallowers"), and her mother (Diane Weist) insensitively compares the death of Becca's drug-addicted brother to the loss of her young son. Coffee and wine are sipped, weighty conversations about coping and pain ensue, and fights over what mementos of their son should remain erupt between husband and wife. Worse, Becca has started stalking Jason (Miles Teller), the teenager responsible for the accident. Despondent and wracked with guilt, he channels his feelings into a comic book entitled Rabbit Hole, about a son who searches for his dead father in an alternate universe.

If the movie sounds like grief-porn, you're only partially right. With but three films under his belt, Mitchell has established himself as a director who both appreciates and encourages actors to confront those emotions that usually go unexplored in Hollywood films. Here he mostly avoids the suffocating gloom of his subject matter and instead focuses on the ordinariness of loss, how it bounces between unexpected comedy and wrenching anguish. Rabbit Hole rarely wallows, and even manages to offer instances of hope and grace.

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