From the E. Annie Proulx novel about a widower named Quoyle who returns with his daughter Bunny to his Newfoundland roots, and becomes (among other things) the ace reporter on a local rag called The Gammy Bird. A tall tale, a dark tale, a droll tale, arch, sardonic, grotesque, gaudy, absurd, odd, occult, unnatural -- loaded, in short, with the hallmarks of contemporary Serious Fiction. Kevin Spacey (acting like a half-wit), Cate Blanchett (acting like a cream tart), Judi Dench (acting crusty), and Julianne Moore (acting with an accent) invest it with some of the traits of Serious Cinema as well. Sample: the hero's aunt shows up unannounced on the day of his wife's accidental death, close on the heels of his parents' double suicide, and she pilfers his father's -- her own brother's -- ashes, replacing them in the urn with ordinary fireplace ashes, so that she can take them home in a plastic bag, dump them down the outhouse potty, and piss on them. (She has her reasons, it turns out. They involve revenge for incest. Lasse Hallstrom, the earthy director, is the one who also made The Cider House Rules: a thematic pattern develops.) With Scott Glenn, Pete Postlethwaite, Rhys Ifans. (2001) — Duncan Shepherd
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