EVERY THING WILL BE FINE

Every Thing Will Be Fine

When movies became talkies, it didn’t mean that everyone in them had to shout. And when colour became commonplace, not everyone wore purple. Wim Wenders’ newest drama proves that 3D doesn’t have to be reserved for animated adventures and superhero stories. You can tell a basic drama quite nicely in the third dimension.

Not that the director doesn’t pull the odd trick. Let’s just say that the so-called Vertigo effect (zoom in as the camera pulls back), named for Hitchcock’s use of it in his 1958 masterpiece, is even trippier when the third dimension is felt rather than merely implied.

But for the most part the 3D is used to sparing visual effect. Dust motes dancing in a beam of sunlight are quite beautiful, and the Quebec landscape reveals a literal depth of field: I’ve never seen fields with such depth.

The story is fairly simple, if undeniably tragic. Struggling writer Tomas (James Franco) is driving in the snowy countryside when he narrowly missed a boy on a toboggan. Shaken but convinced that all is well, he brings the lad up the driveway to the house, where the mother’s question — asking where the boy’s brother is — becomes the scariest line in the film.

Tomas spends the rest of the movie, which jumps forward several years at a time, dealing with the events of that day. So too does Charlotte Gainsbourg as the child’s mother; Rachel McAdams as Tomas’s ex; and Marie-Jozée Croze as his new love.

Franco’s character goes by many names. To Sara he’s Tomas, spoken in a believable though still distracting French- Canadian accent by the London, Ont.-born star. His dad calls him Tommy. His publisher (Peter Stormare) prefers Tom. Wenders has said he likes the Biblical allusion to “the guy who doesn’t quite believe anything ... (He’s) somebody who tries to see things with his intellect and not his emotions.”

That might be the trickiest part of Bjorn Olaf Johannessen’s script to bring to the screen, regardless of how many dimensions you use. The actors under-emote like mad, which may annoy audiences who want fireworks or at least a few more sparks between characters. But there’s something quietly appealing in the way this story moves ever so slowly from despair to hope. ΩΩ½

Every Thing Will Be Fine opens Dec. 11 in Toronto ( 3D), Ottawa ( 2D) and Montreal ( 2D and 3D), and throughout the winter in other cities.

(He’s) somebody who tries to see things with his intellect and not his emotions