Tochtli, a boy who likes hats, dictionaries, samurais, guillotines, and the French. And now, all he wants is a new animal for his private zoo: a Namibian pygmy hippo. HIs father, Yolcaut, is willing to satisfy his every whim, even if that whim is an endangered exotic animal. Because Yolcaut will always manage.
On paper, John Cameron Mitchell, who brought us the raucous, utterly dear Hedwig and the Angry Inch and the sexually adventurous Shortbus, is the last person to take on a straight-ahead domestic drama. Here he is, nonetheless, with Rabbit Hole, about an ordinary couple riding the waves of a loss that’s no less terrible for being as common as dust.
Yet star and co-producer Nicole Kidman chose boldly and well when she signed Mitchell to direct her production company’s first picture. He brings respect, tenderness and a generous helping of his antic wit to Rabbit Hole, not to mention a rare gift for adding visual radiance to a talky stage play. Nimbly adapted by David Lindsay-Abaire from his Pulitzer Prize-winning play, the movie both mimics and slyly violates the stately TV-movie plod through stages of grief to a hard-won but inevitable serenity.
There’s nothing tidy about the fraying marriage of Howie (Aaron Eckhart) and Becca (Kidman), a well-heeled couple reeling from the accidental death of their 4-year-old son. Mitchell keeps the pace leisurely and the tone muted, but an abyss of incomprehension and resentment opens up between the two as they stagger through their polarized responses to the tragedy. While Howie tries to hang on to every reminder of his son, obsessively replaying home videos on his cell phone, Becca seeks to erase all traces of the boy. She puts away his clothes, removes his drawings from the refrigerator and lashes out at any unfortunate who offers consoling bromides.
