Sundance. Away From Her.

"Sarah Polley, the best actress not enough people know about, is poised to become a director everyone is talking about," wrote Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times the other day. "Away From Her [site], Polley's first feature as a writer-director, comes to the Sundance Film Festival after an opening at Toronto that had local critics calling it 'one of the most astonishing feature debuts by a Canadian director in ages.'"

The IFC's Alison Willmore finds it "so grown-up it is, thematically, approaching death.... Polley's direction and dialogue adaptations are so self-consciously lyrical that they constantly throw you out of the film, so the fact that the story takes unexpected turns is more of a clinical observation than a recommendation."

Writing in Film Threat, Jeremy Mathews has nothing but praise for the two leads, Julie Christie and Gordon Pinsent.

Update: "Away from Her was adapted from an Alice Munro story by Polley herself," notes Cinematical's James Rocchi, and "it's an astonishingly moving feature-length directorial debut. It manages to get fresh, bold performances from seasoned veterans Christie and Pinsent. It also turns what could have been mawkish, rote TV-movie-of-the-week material into a truly engaging drama."

Update, 1/23: Andrew O'Hehir for Salon: "As pale and lovely as a Canadian winter sunrise, Away From Her is a story of love, sex and disease whose major characters are all over 60. And don't think you can just snuggle up to it; Polley's adaptation of Alice Munro's story 'The Bear Came Over the Mountain' is loaded with icy switchbacks and spiky surprises."

Update, 1/30: Eric Kohn for the New York Press: "A rare treat: Straightforward storytelling with no gimmicks or last minute tricks—instead, we get a solid pace and involving conflict. Sad as hell, when all's said and done."

Coverage of the coverage: The Park City Index.

Posted by dwhudson at January 22, 2007 6:58 AM