Things We Lost in the Fire

Audrey's husband Brian is shot in the street while trying to protect a woman from her husband. After the funeral Audrey asks Jerry, Brian's childhood friend, into the house. Jerry is a heroin addict and Audrey had spent years keeping him away from her husband. Now they are under one roof: one has lost her husband, the other his life. The children take to Jerry, and Audrey first holds onto him and then punishes him. Susanne Bier directed. It was the Danish director's first film in English, from a screenplay by Allan Loeb. Halle Berry plays Audrey, Benicio del Toro plays Jerry and David Duchovny plays Brian. The form is the same as in Bier's Danish work: the camera sits very close to the eye and scenes are built out of a small piece of a face. That closeness was unusual in American star cinema and became the thing most discussed in reviews. It opened on 19 October 2007. The box office was a rout: 8.5 million dollars against a 16 million budget, with a 1.5 million opening weekend that placed it eleventh. Rotten Tomatoes sits at 65 percent across 127 reviews, almost all of them about the performances. Who it is for: viewers who like quiet drama that carries grief and addiction at once, and Benicio del Toro. Who it is not for: anyone who wants distance. The film never leaves the faces and hardly gives you a wide shot to breathe in.