Danny Boy, You Must Go and I Must Bide

Review: Rabbit Hole

Fifteen minutes in, I heard rustling behind me. Soon enough, a mother had scooped up her bags and headed out of the theater with her ten-year-old son. I suppose that there are still people in this world who go blindly to the movies, who buy tickets to Rabbit Hole assuming it's for kids, then are surprised when the film starts. Those who knew the premise of John Cameron Mitchell's film, I think, might also have registered some surprise at its often sunny execution.

Mitchell gained cult status for being outrageous, or at least boyishly defiant: the drag-rock spectacle Hedwig and the Angry Inch and overtly sexual Shortbus were his first films. He handles David Lindsay-Abaire's scenes with the restraint that Ben Brantley noted in the original stage script: "This anatomy of grief doesn't so much jerk tears as tap them."

Eight months after her four-year-old son, Danny, is struck by a car, Becca Corbett (played by Nicole Kidman) struggles to find direction. Lindsay-Abaire avoids the obvious melodramatic tics that could have marred or sentimentalized Becca's recovery. Though she and her husband Howie (played by Aaron Eckhart) fall into shouting matches, we feel an underlying stability in their marriage. But they keep their secrets: Becca follows the high-school-aged driver who caused the accident, due more to chance than his negligence; Howie smokes pot with a friend from group counseling. The film focuses closely on the Corbett family, who has been sidelined with tragedy before.

Nicole Kidman, an actress of natural restraint herself, deserves praise for producing this adaptation, one that required four distributors. She suits smaller projects better than lavish studio remakes. The cast has adopted her instinct to internalize. Kidman's dry pinches of humor flesh out a woman unconvinced by the "God talk" in group, and rankled by her mother's (Dianne Wiest) comparisons to her own grief. Eckhart and Wiest are sympathetic and understated, and Miles Teller is especially refreshing as the bright but scared driver. If much of the drama feels small and familiar, Kidman and company never overplay their hand. "Somewhere out there, I'm having a good time," Becca confesses, as if allowing the audience to feel Rabbit Hole's unexpected positive energy.