Contour maps Alice Goodwin isn't easy. She's rude, unkind, uncharming. School nurse Alice does not feel great joy from communicating with children who are irritating to varying degrees, just as Alice mother does not try to restrain her anger at the intolerable capricious daughters, the eldest of whom constantly declares that she hates her mother. So she lives: in the morning a portion of dochurkin hysterical tricks with the dumping of an undesirable breakfast on the floor, in the afternoon a string of alien children taking her out of themselves, in the evening ... In the evening there is a husband who seems to be, but who is not. One thing gives her a person who knows how to get pleasure from life - friendship with a neighbor Teresa. But minute seconds of inattention, and on this map of the world there is no room for a whole small life. Alice is drowning in the pond by Lizzie, Teresa's daughter. Then there's more.
The only cinematic work of theatrical director Scott Elliott is a harsh existential drama in which the director tells the story of how much shit can fall on one person and how he will cope with it. And he manages this with the asceticism inherent in the nude Sigourney Weaver. No minor character looks alien and casual at this celebration of life's collapse. Each of them is a type clearly marked in space and time, in which the features endowed with them are not attracted by the ears, whether it is the carelessness and meanness of a young mother or the readiness of the gray farm masses to expel the “criminal” and her family from their closed, mapped world. If only there was a reason, and we will believe, think, with even greater passion believe in what we thought, and rally against at least someone. Simple and truthful. It is much more complicated with central images. Alice Goodwin is strong enough to remain true to herself under all circumstances. It's an example of a "thousands," with a full range of problems, millions. But this is the only thing that really “grounds” the heroine and reduces the distance between her and the viewer. Alice's got a lot going on, and she's kind of ready for that. And the fact that Mrs. Goodwin is not the embodiment of all the virtues of the world, plays a cruel joke: it is not possible with the supposed drama to feel all the pain of fate mockery of Alice and with sincere ecstasy to admire her resilience, primarily because she does not feel it. Substituting serious conversations with questions about washing ironing is not perceived as a way to get distracted and forgotten, but indicates emotional dullness due to these real washing irons. Rather, it is necessary to observe with a share of the still present interest the behavior of a woman who once or twice pops for proforma, blurting out “I only do evil to everyone” or denying her husband routine, sleep-preceding sex, and then again turns into an exclusively “thing-in-itself”, which in the end is only “truly sorry”. Teresa Collins (symbolically Teresa) is extremely strong, so strong that her middle name is Tolstoy’s forgiveness. That’s who should have given much more banal timekeeping and directorial, alas, short-sighted attention: the first, with a claim to the image of the notorious “strong woman”, rather unoriginally did not allow herself to break, the second unpredictable and so penetrating and did not think to break. It is in these two images that all the most valuable and impressive in the picture lies, but only the heroine of Juliana Moore looks truly attractive.
Behind the almost documentary style of depicting life collisions occurring against the background of shabby facades of farm buildings, a certain necessary flair of artistic charm is lost. Such a poor nuanced tone of the narrative loses a certain cinematic gloss, and a solid by name cast is too “rich” for everything conceived in this film. Despite the fact that serious and painful battles with fate unfold on the screen, the tear is still lacking. Focusing on one of the attacks that Alice Goodwin suffered, Winterberg’s “Hunt” masterfully demonstrates that sometimes it is better to take on one thing and talk about it with pain, passion and depth, rather than spraying on the heaviness of this life without bringing any of them, in fact, to the proper level of sharpness. If this is a map of the world, it is rather dull, rather ancient, where everything seems to be there, but monochrome.