Review of Snow Cake (2006) by Meng S — 04 Jun 2008

Snow Cake is a story of how people deal with life's situations. All of the characters in the story have things to deal with.

The story focuses on Alan Rickman's character, Alex, who is an insular, brooding, and perhaps lonely man trying to experience life once again. Through an unfortunate circumstance he is thrown together with two very different women - a very verbal and eccentric autistic woman (played by Sigourney Weaver) and her neighbour Maggie (played by Carrie-Anne Moss.) It's the interactions of these three people that make this movie worth watching.

I liked how each character developed in this movie. Rickman really breaks from his typical evil villain stereotype which I found difficult at accept at first but eventually grew on me and I ended up believing him in his role. I also liked how well Weaver plays an autistic person and how much there was to learn from her.

There are no huge flaws to this movie, but this movie has no major revelations to give to the viewer either. It is a movie to watch for the small moments that will resonate with you. In fact, that is the point of the movie - to stop and notice the small things around you.

It's once again nice to see Canadian cinema developing and attracting such attention. This story is set in Ontario and was filmed there.