Film Brief - Season’s broodings

You know it’s a bad day when you have to drown your ailing kitten, then catch a bus to Detroit. As Winter Passing introduces us to the rootless, miserable life of Reese (Zooey Deschanel), the drama initially promises to be closely observed but unbearably sad. A gloomy New York actress, Reese anesthetizes herself with drugs and meaningless sex, but will slam her hand in a drawer just for a pick-me-up.

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Reese’s depression can be traced back to her parents, whose dysfunctions were the stuff of literary legend. Though her mother recently died, her father, Don (Ed Harris), still labors to write as a burned-out boozer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Reese travels to her father’s house to secure some of her parents’ letters for a grasping literary agent, but she puts her mercenary motives aside when she finds three souls even more screwed up than she is upon her homecoming.

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Reese meets Corbit (Will Ferrell), a painfully shy rock musician who serves as Don’s gatekeeper, and Shelley (Amelia Warner), one of Don’s former students, who may be either his mistress or his nurse. The dynamic seems loosely inspired by Shakespeare’s The Tempest while also riffing on the mystique of J.D. Salinger: Don is another recluse who wrote the Great American Novel, then retreated from the literary world. Winter Passing writer/director Adam Rapp may be best known for playing the bespectacled filmmaker in Rent on stage and screen, but he’s also an insightful young playwright and proves himself to be a low-key yet sensitive and compelling filmmaker.

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Prescreened for Atlanta critics but never released here theatrically, Winter Passing was recently released on DVD, and thanks to the presence of Ferrell, will prove easier to track down than the other downbeat indie films of its peer group. Ferrell clearly tries to prove his chops with a serious, respectable performance and finds some quirky pathos when Corbit attempts to sing the Eagles’ “I Can’t Tell You Why” at an open-mic night. You still detect a certain effort to his underplaying, as if he’s struggling to keep his face straight, his trademark primal bellows in check.

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Winter Passing never becomes a laugh riot by any means, but a rueful sense of humor runs through its second half. Even the more eccentric frills, like Don’s wish to move the furniture onto the chilly front lawn, never seem self-conscious, and the film earns its tone of renewal and reconciliation. Its deliberate pace may put off some viewers, but Winter Passing offers rich rewards to anyone willing to meet it halfway.