A MAP OF THE WORLD A film review by David N. Butterworth Copyright 2000 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
When the kids are acting up, parents may wish to be transported to some solitary place where the rigors of domesticity can be placed far behind them, if only for a couple of hours. The state penitentiary would probably not be most people's first choice of destination, but that's where Alice Goodwin finds herself in "A Map of the World." Oddly, Alice seems to welcome, even relish, this opportunity to get away from her demanding children and her ineffective husband, yet there's one thing she cannot get away from no matter how hard she tries: the specter of irreconcilable guilt.
How could anyone live with oneself when a child entrusted into one's care dies?
This act of criminal negligence isn't what lands Alice in prison, but it is the start of a downward spiral that Jane Hamilton examines in her book, and director Scott Elliot attempts to examine in his cinematic adaptation, scripted by Peter Hedges and Polly Platt.
Elliot's "A Map of the World" fails to pack any kind of emotional wallop, however, which is strange given the film's subject matter and even stranger given the confident performances of its leads. Sigourney Weaver is convincing as the emotionally-troubled Alice, David Strathairn plays her husband Howard with his usual sensitivity, and Julianne Moore is typically strong as Theresa, the friend and neighbor whose young daughter accidentally drowns in the Goodwin's pond.
Alice, who has promised to take Theresa's two young girls and her own two daughters swimming, spends a little too long searching for her bathing suit and returns downstairs to find one of her charges missing. A few panic-stricken moments later, Alice discovers the little girl lying face down in the water.
Compare this scene to the drowning at the beginning of Nicolas Roeg's "Don't Look Now," for example, and you'll get a sense of Elliot's lifeless handling of his film's dramatic content. In fact, the director's matter-of-fact approach to the material is a serious liability; scenes and situations are presented rather than developed, and while Weaver gives Alice her all, we are left feeling distanced from this woman and from this cast of characters.
After the accident, Alice, a part-time school nurse who has always spoken her mind, is accused of child abuse as the unnamed Wisconsin town turns its back on her and her family. The film veers between rural domestic drama and tacky women's prison melodrama culminating in an impotent and blessedly-short courtroom sequence. Again, Elliot keeps the events at arm's length, as if afraid to commit one way or another.
Arliss Howard plays defense attorney Paul Reverdy with a wink in his eye which comes across as tasteless given the seriousness of the charge, and that's Louise Fletcher (Nurse Ratched from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") as Alice's conscientious mother-in-law. Their contributions are adequate, but don't enhance the drama any.
"A Map of the World" is a well-meaning but imperfect work, recommended only for fans of Ms. Weaver, devotees of imperturbable cinema, or, perhaps, cartographers.
-- David N. Butterworth dnb@dca.net
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