Things We Lost in the Fire

Aroview: A newly widowed mother (Berry) forms an uneasy yet mutually beneficial relationship with her late husband's best friend (Del Toro) as they attempt to restore hope to their shattered lives in this redemptive melodrama from Danish dir. Susanne Bier.

Despite shameless Oscar fishing from squint-to-show-seriousness Del Toro and a typecast Berry, their emotionally charged performances are the meat and potatoes of this otherwise trite exercise in hokey healing power. The director is thankfully able to temper some of the script's histrionics, though traces of her Dogme 95 derring-do are subsumed into Hollywood's fatty fold.