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Title: Promises fire, delivers smoke...
Review: After a great, gorgeous set-up, this film about tremulous emotions, human fragility and tricks of the mind settles down into an all-too literal and mundane drama. Too bad the filmmakers felt the need to "spell it all out" in the script, instead of weaving the viewer into a more subtle human mystery. Nicole Kidman is lit, made up, and photographed like a goddess--but she does more for the character and for the movie than they do for her. Although beautiful, she's sort of playing it dazed here, a smart but tepid woman with a vacuousness about her that doesn't allow for inner fire. I wanted to her to yell and shake the strange boy who enters her life. Instead she tucks him in...
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