Cruel & Unusual

A man wrongly convicted of killing his wife finds himself in an institution he cannot place. The punishment handed down here is not imprisonment: he has to live through his wife's death again and again, without end. In sessions that look like group therapy, each inmate recounts his own moment and none of them admits guilt. The more often the man watches his own story, the wider the gap grows between what he remembers and what actually happened. It is a small Canadian production that builds its idea out of repetition rather than showy effects: the same kitchen, the same morning, details shifting slightly. Merlin Dervisevic's film is less a prison story than a study of how tightly a person holds to the account he gives of himself. The ending may look at first like a moral reckoning, but the film does not hand the verdict to the audience; it waits for the character to reach it himself.