What would you do if your child refused to come home? What if they preferred, instead, to live on the streets?
In this faithful adaptation of Carol Shields's final novel, a Toronto couple (Catherine Keener and Matt Craven) learns that their university-aged daughter, Norah, has removed herself from the world, choosing to spend her days on the sidewalk outside Honest Ed's, holding a sign that says "Goodness." She won't talk. She sleeps in a nearby shelter at night.
There are strange marks on her wrists. What worked in Shields's quiet, contemplative novel about a family in crisis falls flat on screen. The movie is betrayed by faux-poetic voiceovers and an ending that aims for profoundness but comes across as pretentious. (It was fine in the book, mind you.) The film asks thoughtful, important questions – how do we face a world that is often so ugly? – but so does the novel; find a used copy of that, instead. (14A)