Becca (Nicole Kidman) and Howie (Aaron Eckhart) are a fairly happy couple with a 4-year-old same named Danny. One day, Danny follows his puppy into the street and is fatally hit by a car. Naturally, Becca and Howie enter the nightmare of all nightmares — grieving for your child.
If there is one thing these clips from “Rabbit Hole” show, it’s that Becca seems to have a lot of trouble accepting the consolation from friends, family and the support group she and Howie join.
In “Meeting,” Becca tells fellow group support members (including Sandra Oh of “Grey’s Anatomy”) that she is not upset about her sister’s pregnancy, where it seems Howie is. They are both surprised that Oh and her husband have been attending the group for 8 years. In “Another Angel,” Becca doesn’t buy that another couple’s child was taken because “God needed another angel.” He’s God, after all, she says — why can’t he just make a new angel? And in “Bowling Alley,” Becca tells off her mother Nat (Dianne Wiest) after she goes on about Becca’s brother’s death at a birthday party. She’s tired of her mom trying to sympathize with her — her brother died a 30-year-old heroin addict while her son was a young child. There’s a big difference, she says.
The other clips show Becca opening up to her mother more about grief. “Brick” is a great showcase of Kidman’s acting skills. She painfully asks Nat if the grief ever goes away. Nat says no, but it changes — “at some point it becomes bearable, something you can carry around like a brick in your pocket.”
Based on a play (in which “Sex and the City’s” Cynthia Nixon won a Tony for playing Becca), “Rabbit Hole” will certainly be a weeper, but I believe one with substance, great storytelling and acting.
Jump down the “Rabbit Hole” on Dec. 17.
. . .
Follow Amanda Koehler on Twitter at http://twitter.com/AEKoehler.