In This Moment

Brown (Come Away with Me) burrows into the unraveling of two families in this meticulous study of unresolved guilt and buried secrets. Meg, a busy realtor, mother of 15-year-old daughter Audrey and wife of radiologist Ryan, sees a car mow down and paralyze Audrey’s friend, Jack—an event that triggers the return of Meg’s haunting nightmares of the death at age 16 of her own best friend, Paige, in a drunk-driving crash. Meg, who never resolved her guilt over Paige’s death, becomes increasingly undone by Jack’s injury, blaming herself for waving at the boy across the street just before the driver slammed into the teen. As the weight of past and present tragedies gnaws at Meg and frays the bonds of her marriage and friendships, Audrey deals with the situation by acting out. At the same time, Jack’s father, stay-at-home dad Andrew, moves closer to Meg (and further from his own angry and distraught wife, Alyssa). Brown subtly weaves the ordinary details of everyday life with the turmoil of emotions bubbling dangerously close to the surface. This is an admirably layered portrait of how love can bend and still not break, and how the pain of betrayal and lost innocence, once confronted, can slowly fade. (May)