'Snow Cake'

In the kooky little Canadian town of Wawa, a stranger knocks on the door of an autistic woman to break the news that her daughter was killed while hitching a ride in his car. So begins the awkward pairing of Linda (a no-frills Sigourney Weaver), who responds to the bad news by munching snow and focusing on shiny ornaments, and Alex, a taciturn fellow (Alan Rickman—who else?) whose spirit has been all but snuffed out by past trauma. Marc Evans's indie drama, from a script by Angela Pell (who has an autistic son), does sidle up to the brink of mawkishness, but it pulls back so nicely into Weaver's rich, hard-headed evocation of Linda's limitations that one forgives the eye-popping speed with which Alex, grieving for two people he's never known, re-enters the human race and falls for Carrie-Anne Moss.