The Kindness of Strangers

A film set in New York. Clara runs from home with her two sons. Her husband is a policeman and violent; she drives into the city with nowhere to stay. They sleep in the car at night. By day they look for a library, a hospital waiting room, somewhere warm. The film watches other people too. Alice is a nurse; she works at a hospital and also runs a support group and a soup kitchen. Marc has just come out of prison and starts running a Russian restaurant. A man keeps losing jobs and does not understand why. The paths cross at the restaurant. What the narrative is interested in is not poverty but help: it asks how much people can do for each other and how far that goes. The answer is optimistic and the film does not hide it. New York is shot as winter; the difference between cold wet streets and the warmth of interiors is its visual idea. Zoe Kazan plays Clara, Andrea Riseborough plays Alice and Tahar Rahim plays Marc. Bill Nighy, Caleb Landry Jones and Jay Baruchel are in the cast. Lone Scherfig wrote and directed. The film opened the Berlin Film Festival and the reviews were largely poor. Who it is for: anyone who likes multi-character intersecting narratives and an optimistic tone. Who it is not for: anyone expecting realism; the coincidences are many and the characters' problems resolve too easily.