Susan Granger’s review of “A MAP OF THE WORLD” (First Look Pictures)
There’s no greater tragedy than being responsible for the death of a child, and that’s just the first blow Sigourney Weaver suffers at the beginning of this complex, dramatic portrait of a woman in emotional agony. Then, still reeling with guilt, she’s falsely accused of child abuse, an offense which sends her to jail to await trial. Based on the novel by Jane Hamilton and adapted by Peter Hedges and Polly Platt, it’s an implausible yet harrowing story of victimization. Weaver plays Alice Goodwin, a devoted mother of two daughters who works part-time as a school nurse in a rural Wisconsin town. She and her wimpy, taciturn husband (David Strathairn), a farmer, are a curiosity. They’re relative newcomers who painted their barn blue. But, above all, the bright, fiercely independent Alice arouses people’s ire with her cynical, sarcastic attitude towards the complexities of life. Her only friend is a gentle neighbor (Julianne Moore) who also has two little girls. Her nemesis is a tarty welfare mom (Chloe Sevigny) whom outspoken Alice openly accuses of neglecting her young son. When suspicion focuses on Alice after an accidental drowning in a pond on her property, the town turns on her with self-righteous fury, preferring to believe the flimsy, bogus charges of child molestation brought against her rather than seek the truth. Oddly, the unflappable Alice seems to relish her martyrdom, openly enjoying her predicament. Whether it’s because that’s her perverse way of coping with the bizarre situation or she’s temporarily insane is not made clear by director Scott Elliot, who makes it into a masochistic, maudlin melodrama. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, A Map of the World is a dense, disturbing, depressing 4, made tolerable only by Sigourney Weaver’s intelligent, vivid performance.
