Winter Solstice [DVD] [2005]

The movie takes place in a quiet, leafy, but nondescript New Jersey suburb, where Jim Winters (Anthony LaPaglia) is a landscaper, still struggling with the death of his wife from five years ago. He's doing his best to raise his two boys, Gabe (Aaron Stanford) and Pete (Mark Webber). They are a relatively tight-knit family, each pitching in to help run the home, but lately Jim senses that the boys are slipping away from him. Their lives seem aimless and non-communicative, and there's an intrinsic inability or unwillingness to open up to each other or anyone else about their shared pain.

Peter is having problems in school; his inattentiveness is constantly getting him into trouble, and he has little motivation in life outside of shooting hoops with his buddies. He's wary and cynical, getting into pointless fights in convenience store parking lots, and sleeping in to all hours of the morning. While his father defends him at the local parent teacher meeting, he is concerned that Pete may not even end up finishing high school. Gabe is also full of resentment: Working extra shifts in the local supermarket to get the money, Gabe is ready to pack up his car and head down to the Florida home of an old friend to work on his boat. He doesn't care what his father or brother, or girlfriend Stacey (Michelle Monaghan) might want or say. To him they're all just a bunch of losers.

When Molly (Alison Janney) moves in to house sit down the block, and borrows a hand truck from her new neighbors, Jim strikes up a casual friendship with her. As thanks for the loan, Molly invites the Winters family over for dinner, but when the time comes to eat; only Jim goes. Of course, Jim and Molly like each other, and as he steadily begins to open up to her, he tells her about the car accident that killed his wife and that he had "built his life on something that no longer exists."

The strength of the film is the actors, and they certainly do their best to rise about the flat script, the plodding direction, and the under-formed superfluous characters. Obviously the film is trying to capture suburban naturalism and the plight of the "everyman." Dull people obviously have problems too, but their endless round of restrained, semi-articulate verbal ways just doesn't inspire and enthuse. LaPaglia is a fine and gifted actor, but here he's little more than a monosyllable on legs, and Alyson Janney, in her few brief scenes, just doesn't do enough with her character.

As an exercise in low-key realism, Winter Solstice fairs sort of ok, but the lack of a definitive storyline soon brings much of the proceedings to a stifling and stultifying halt. The film certainly had a lot potential: a household of grieving, emotionally frail, and unsatisfied men could have been made into dramatically fine film. And in all fairness, there are touches of drama here and there, especially in one scene when Jim has a final heated confrontation with Gabe, just as his son is all packed and ready to go. But by enlarge Winter Solstice drags along, quaint, gloomy, and morose, with the occasional flash of life, until, at long last, it limps to a rather limp, humdrum, and anti-climactic ending. Mike Leonard April 05.