>>PREVIEW
SNOW CAKE
STARRING: Alan Rickman, Carrie-Anne Moss, Sigourney Weaver
DIRECTED BY: Marc Evans
Opens Friday, December 22
Uptown Screen
Carrie-Anne Moss built a career on delivering broken bones and gunshot wounds on screen, most notably in the Matrix trilogy as Trinity. Merciless and cold, she is a force of wanton destruction forced into curved leather. Moss, on the other hand, exudes a warmth felt even over a telephone line. In a more sexist publication, she’d be called an absolute doll. To this woman, I say, the film didn’t work.
"You’re entitled to your opinion. That’s what you’re getting paid for," says Moss after a pause so thick she could choke me with it.
The film in question is Snow Cake. An ex-con (Alan Rickman) finds atonement in planning the funeral of a hitchhiker (Emily Hampshire) who died in his car. Arriving in the small town of Wawa, he meets the hitchhiker’s mother (Sigourney Weaver), an autistic woman living alone and a friendship fit for a Hallmark card develops. During his stay, other quaint clichés of Canadian small towns cross his path, including the mysterious lady next door (Moss) he falls in love with.
The mystery of Moss’s character is never explained, as the film is too busy hitting all the clichés of an "important movie" involving issues with embarrassing aplomb. The cast, though, does an admirable job in turning an awful movie into a middling one with a radiant Moss, in particular, bringing a missed sexiness and warmth to the screen. In other words, the film didn’t work. Moss, though, takes the criticism of her latest project in stride.
"It’s not my job to worry about whether people like it or not," she says. "It does hurt your feelings, because you love the movie. My mom, though, just sent an e-mail from a friend of hers who saw Snow Cake overseas and thought it was amazing. That’s what I want to hear, that’s more important to me than what somebody in Variety or the Hollywood Reporter is saying."
Moss isn’t one to follow trends or career strategy, she chooses roles that speak to her. After the success with the Matrix, she has space to pick and choose. As cloying as the film gets, Snow Cake strives to enlighten audiences about life as an autistic adult. That’s what spoke to Moss.
"There’s something so truthful about somebody with autism," says Moss. "They’re going to express how they feel in that moment and there’s nothing you can do. The woman who wrote the script has an autistic child and I thought it was a real admirable script for her to write. Considering it’s so personal for her, I wanted to be part of that and help tell the story she wanted to write."
The entire cast, in other interviews, points to the same reasons for working on the film. Apparently, it’s less work than holding a benefit. Noble intentions do not always make art. Still, the cast gives their all with Weaver even taking a method approach to her role as the autistic Linda Freeman. When asked if she considered doing the Freeman role, Moss shrugs.
"I’m not a big fighter for roles," she says. "There could be a role that comes my way that I have to play, but I tend to not go there. I don’t like to be disappointed. I do what I can to protect myself from disappointed. Things that I maybe wanted but didn’t come my way, it was better they didn’t for whatever reason. What I do is brutal. It’s an industry you cannot look to for validation. For me to be in that competitive energy, I don’t know if I could do it." |
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