Rabbit Hole (2010)

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell. Starring Nicole Kidman, Aaron Eckhart, Dianne Wiest, Tammy Blanchard, Miles Teller, Sandra Oh, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Tenney. [R]

Sad story of parents (Kidman, Eckhart) struggling to come to terms with grief after their young son is killed in a car accident. The credible, wrenching performances from Kidman, Eckhart and Wiest (as Kidman’s mother) and the curtailment of melodramatic catharsis are what set this apart from so many other heartrending post-tragedy dramas—it’s morose, but not oppressively so, as shades of humor and relief do creep in. Its stage origins aren’t hard to recognize, and David Lindsay-Abaire’s adaptation of his own Pulitzer-winning work seesaws between scenes that invoke some kind of emotional truth and scenes that ring false; the encounters between Kidman and the teenager (Teller) who was driving the car that struck her child are most often guilty of the latter. Kidman also co-produced. Teller’s film debut.

70/100