Review of Rabbit Hole (2010) by Panta O — 28 Jul 2011

I missed this movie in the cinema and I was glad to find it on Qantas flight from Shanghai to Sydney. A real drama (like they use to make them :-) ) with exceptional performance from Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, and Dianne Wiest, was very finely directed by John Cameron Mitchell. Everything was moving in a steady pace following very good screenplay which was an adaptation by David Lindsay-Abaire of his 2005 play of the same name. Kidman produced the project via her company, Blossom Films... I have to mention that I am not great fan of her but here her performance as Becca Corbett was so well done that I felt sorry that she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress only, not the award itself!

The plot deals with a couple, Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie Corbett (Aaron Eckhart), struggling to heal after the death of their 4-year-old son, Danny (Phoenix List). They mourn the death while their relationship suffers from conflict. Becca wants to move and get on with their lives while Howie wants to keep Danny's room unchanged.

Sexual frustration, lives of others with similar stories, pain, anguish, justification... everything could be irritating for one or another... and the solutions are not passing by. The couple attend a self-help group, but Becca is irritated by the group's justifications for her son's death and she stops attending the meetings. Howie continues to go and there he meets Gabby (Sandra Oh) and after some indirect mutual sexual advances, Howie backs out and returns to his real love - Becca. Meanwhile, Becca starts meeting with Jason (Miles Teller), the boy responsible for Danny's death. She discovers that he is guilty and does not blame him for the accident. He tells him about a comic book he is writing which is about 'Rabbit Holes'...

In this wonderful movie Kidman grabs the central focus of the story and her performance is riveting because she was so successful in playing the entire film at two levels, the surface everyday life and then what is turning over and over again in her mind. Peter Debruge of Variety wrote about this performance: "a refreshingly positive-minded take on cinema's ultimate downer: overcoming the death of a child," and I agree that both Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart delivered expert performances... watch it if you haven't seen it yet!