Photojournalists in the early days of the civil strife in Yugoslavia. A Pulitzer winner from Newsweek, trapped inside a collapsed building, is presumed dead, but his wife, who afterwards receives an inaudible long-distance call and tentatively recognizes him (from behind) in news footage on CNN, believes he's still alive. So strong is her belief that she abandons her two children in the care of her unlovable mother, and drives a rental car straight into the heart of the chaos. French filmmaker Elie Chouraqui (not well known over here) invests recent history with some deep 19th-century romanticism, verging even on l'amour fou. Or in the vernacular, "She's off her rocker, for God's sake." Andie MacDowell, with all her hair if not all her marbles, doesn't do much more in the role than knit her brows and look askance, but perhaps her very opacity speaks to the fathomless mysteries of the human heart. The portrayal of the war itself, in vivid color and crystalline focus, is so scarily convincing that it convinces us as well of the improbability -- no, impossibility -- of her adventure, however powerful her incentive. Adrien Brody, Brendan Gleeson, Elias Koteas, David Strathairn. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd
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