Snow Cake

Directed by: Marc Evans
Starring: Alan Rickman, Sigourney Weaver, Carrie-Anne Moss, Emily Hampshire, Callum Keith Rennie
Running Time: 1h 52min

A movie featuring an autistic character, that's not actually about autism. Alan Rickman gives perhaps his most nuanced performance, certainly the best work that i've ever seen him do. His character arc is integral to this sweet, though not sugary film that explores how tragedy can push and pull us in different directions.

Weaver co-stars as a woman with autism, and a child who supports her effort to live independently in a small, Northern town. When Rickman's character enters the lives of the small town inhabitants, through an unfortunate event, it disrupts the patterns that they've chosen to live by.

These habitual practices are called into question, and at times it seems that Weaver's autistic obsessive compulsive tendencies have more merit (attached to her autism) than the choices other adults make in their neurotypical lives. Like any good character study, Weaver's wonderful portrayal shines a light on what we value from our family and relationships with loved ones. The interaction between her and Rickman is equal parts hilarious and heartbreaking.

Carrie-Anne Moss and Callum Keith Rennie do great work in supporting roles, giving their roles an honesty and multi-layered angle, which fits well within the mysteries lying beneath Rickman's character's past and why exactly he is staying in the small town. Hampshire adds a vibrant vivacity of life to the film, where the adults that populate the screen seem too burned by life to exhibit the joy and exuberance that her and her autistic mother find in each snowflake.

A movie as delicate as a snowflake, yet so unique in its presentation of human responses to pain, love, and forgiveness, Snow Cake is the type of film that presents its characters so well, that you feel like you know them. In the process, you may just also learn a little more about yourself.

Grade: A