by KEVIN LAFOREST, JOANNE LATIMER and SARAH ROWLAND

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

Disquieting and dripping with portent, The Ballad of Jack and Rose is an odd piece of work. While not exactly enjoyable, the film is highly watchable, with its doomed premise and Olympic-level acting.

The two lead characters - a father and daughter team - love each other to the point of alarm. Daniel Day-Lewis is Jack, a hippie secluded on a deserted island commune with his teenaged offspring Rose, played by Camilla Belle. They grow their own food and use wind power for electricity. They exchange lingering smiles all day. She doesn't go to school. They have no TV. No radio. Which is probably a good thing - otherwise, Rose might suspect how warped her life is, alone with daddy in his Robinson Crusoe fantasy.

Things are upended when Jack's cardiac condition turns fatal. He's gonna die, and Rose needs help around the house. Enter Jack's secret girlfriend from the mainland, Kathleen (Catherine Keener) and her two teenaged sons (Ryan McDonald and Paul Dano). Unaccustomed to having people around - let alone a woman who gets to sleep with her father - Rose goes mental, making use of snakes, a shotgun, her virginity, scissors and nasty remarks.

Meanwhile, a developer (Beau Bridges) starts to build a bedroom community on the other side of the island. The model home makes Jack froth: "It's not a house, it's a thing to keep the TV dry." You'll find yourself cheering for Day-Lewis, thinking, "Look at him act!"

Director Rebecca Miller (Personal Velocity) keeps the camera uncomfortably close to her actors, adding to the insular island experience. However, she gives Day-Lewis (her husband) free rein to struggle with his character's incestuous urges and revelations about mortality. It's hard to tell what troubles Jack most: his failed commune or his daughter's inevitable womanhood. Jack and Rose is a foreboding tale about how a romantic hippie accidentally screws up his kid, but it's also a love letter to the spirit of the '70s. (JL)

Winter Solstice

Life is full of useless interjections, family squabbles and boring people. But that doesn't mean that we need two hours of screen time to explore this everyday reality. Presumably, somewhere in the 2001 Sundance Screenwriters' Lab Josh Sternfeld's debut snoozer lost the plot because there is no story here.

We have three mourning men from Jersey. Several years ago, mom died in the most common way imaginable. But Jim Winters (Anthony LaPaglia) took it like a man and pushed his feelings way down, so that he could be a pillar of strength for his two sons Gabe (Aaron Stanford) and Pete (Mark Webber). Now his inability to cope with his family's grieving is coming back to bite him in the ass. His son Gabe, who's pushing 20, wants to move out. This, by the way, is big news in the Winters' household. (Is it just me or don't most people want to fly the coop by the time they hit 20?). And Pete is flunking high school. His only chance of passing comes when his history teacher (Ron Livingston), who sees right through the 16-year-old's self-destructive ways, sets out to make memorizing prominent dates fun for the young rebel.

But how is Jim to deal with these ingrates? Enter down-to-earth neighbour Molly (Allison Janney). Her free-spirited ways breath new life into Jim's repressive existence. The narrative arc peaks when we discover that Molly makes a mean Moroccan chicken. The only other on-screen moment with a pulse is when a fed-up Jim throws his sons' beds out on the front lawn. His frenzied mattress tossing perfectly captures the kind of heat-of-the-moment fury that middle-aged people act on before cooling off, only to be mortally embarrassed by their juvenile behaviour.

And that's about it.

The rest is just a series of semi-connected, extremely well acted, half-finished arguments and incomplete heart-to-hearts. If it weren't for the sound-up on the acoustic guitar, we would have no way of knowing when a scene is over because the dialogue sure as hell ain't gonna tip us off.

You could say that Sternfeld is a real genre bender. After all, he took the drama right out of this family drama and replaced it with ZZzzzzz. (SR)

Le Survenant

Between Charles Binamé's 2002 Séraphin and Luc Dionne's upcoming Aurore comes another Québécois remake of a story popularized more than 50 years ago. After being adapted for radio, then TV in the '50s, Germaine Guèvremont's novel is now getting the fancy big-screen treatment.

Le Survenant is about a mysterious stranger (Jean-Nicolas Verreault) who upsets the flow of a small rural community when he shows up unexpectedly with his hands out. Old-man Didace Beauchemin (Gilles Renaud) offers the red-headed hobo food and shelter in return for help around the farm, which strongly displeases his son Amable (François Chénier). Most of the neighbours are also suspicious of this traveller known only as "Le Survenant" (The Outlander), except for Angélina (Anick Lemay) - a social outcast who only gets male attention when locals tease her about her infirmity (she walks with a limp, whenever Lemay remembers to), or when men folk use her to get to her father's land. The Outlander, on the other hand, sincerely cares for her. It's an impossible romance, though, because his true love remains the open road.

This is a thin story that for some reason director Érik Canuel chose to stretch into 133 minutes of wood-chopping, canoe riding and macho posturing. And Verreault, who was great in his supporting role as the big dumb loaf in La Loi du cochon (Canuel's infinitely more distinctive first film), can't pull off a romantic lead as is required here. He's supposed to be a lyrical soul, but he comes off as a boorish idiot. His lack of charm combined with Lemay's underwritten character make the sentimental scenes particularly dull.

Conversely, the scenes where the Outlander and Angélina get mixed up in confrontations with the townspeople - complete with hampered dialogue and scenery-chewing performances - make for a good laugh. And who knows? Maybe, this is intentional, like those commercials spoofing terroir (Québécois country life) clichés. It's possible - Bell did co-produce this film after all. (KL)

The Ballad of Jack and Rose, Winter Solstice and Le Survenant open Friday, April 22

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