Star rating: ***
Dir: Susanne Bier
With: Halle Berry, Benicio del Toro, David Duchovny, John Carroll Lynch

Watch the trailer here

It's not official, but Susanne Bier, the Danish director of this tear-stained drama about devotion and loss, may be the happiest soul in Hollywood right now. For years she toiled away in old Europe, writing and directing stylish, intelligent pictures that were widely admired on the arthouse circuit but deserved to be in the multiplexes. Finally, someone had the sense to send her a ticket to LA and the keys to her very own blockbuster, complete with a big name cast.

In Things We Lost in the Fire, the talent includes two Oscar winners: Halle Berry (Monster's Ball) and Benicio del Toro (Traffic). Joining them is the likeable David Duchovny, an actor whose star, since The X-Files, has been up and down more times than the Dow Jones but is currently in the ascendant with TV show Californication. Bier also has a solid script by Allan Loeb. Although this is his feature debut, Loeb covers difficult subjects with the kind of sensitivity that shows homework has been done. With Bier's experience, her cast and screenplay, this ought to have been a powerhouse drama, throwing out sparks for miles. What we get instead is a movie that burns with all the ferocity of a low-energy lightbulb.

Berry plays Audrey Burke, who is married to Brian (Duchovny). They live in a nice home in Seattle with their adorable kids and love each other deeply. There's tension in the relationship, though. To quote a drama princess from an earlier age, there are three people in this marriage, the third being Brian's friend Jerry (del Toro). Brian has never wavered in his devotion to Jerry, despite the different directions their lives have taken: while Brian has gone down the straight, true path of respectability, Jerry has been lost in the tangled woods of drug addiction.

Audrey has never had any time for her husband's pal. Yet when a random act of violence takes Brian from her she finds herself drawn into Jerry's orbit. Though surrounded by a large, supportive family of her own, the damaged Audrey seeks out the equally damaged Jerry. Theirs will be a strained, odd relationship. Neither friends nor lovers, they are more like survivors of a disaster, clinging to each other in the hope rescue will come soon.

Of the two parts, del Toro is given the most to chew on and he puts in a truly outstanding performance. As the movie follows Jerry's bid to get clean, the squalor doesn't approach anywhere near Trainspotting levels; this is, after all, a mainstream movie pitched at the middle market. The toilet scenes are strictly 15. But Bier and her leading man go as close as they dare to the mundane horrors of addiction. Del Toro, as usual, looks as though he hasn't slept since the day he was born. Physically pained by daylight, and by the company of fellow addicts at his Narcotics Anonymous meetings, Jerry is a mess. Audrey, meanwhile, isn't doing too well either.

If their suffering isn't enough, there's also a neighbour with problems. His woes, praise the Lord and hold the razor blades, are of the kind it's OK to poke fun at. Howard Glassman (John Carroll Lynch) is having a crisis of the mid-life variety. He's the film's big friendly giant, always turning up with an amusing line and a hug. Though Lynch puts in sterling work as a sunbeam, even he can't lift the suffocating gloom that sits over Bier's picture. Like Toto, we can smell the storms approaching from the off. The story almost guarantees them. A distraught wife, an addict - this is not going to be light, witty comedy with slapstick interludes.

The predictability doesn't stop there. Since Monster's Ball, Berry has been associated with what you might call the Krakatoa school of acting. It's been seven years since she last let rip, and Bier hands her the chance to do it again. For an actress who hasn't been enjoying a great run lately - see, or rather don't, the woeful Perfect Stranger, Catwoman or Gothika - Berry gives it her all. It's a gutsy, powerful, moving turn; it's just not a surprising one.

Like Jerry, like every character in this kind of modern melodrama, Berry's Audrey is on a "journey" and the audience must plod along with her as she tries to make peace with what ails her. When Bier has embarked on these trips before, as in After the Wedding, unfamiliar faces and relatively exotic surroundings have made the excursion more interesting. Things We Lost in the Fire takes us to places we've been before in Hollywood movies, with actors behaving in ways we expect. And for a movie that tries so hard to show there are no easy answers to life's difficulties, it pounces on neat solutions like a cat on a mouse. Del Toro aside, not a picture to trouble the fire brigade at a screen near you.