As Alex soon discovers, Linda is autistic; she's capable of looking after herself but unable to process her daughter's death emotionally. This causes some consternation among her neighbors, who doggedly insist that Linda react in the usual way to their rote condolences and giant bereavement cookies. But the only person Linda seems to want around is Alex, and his guilt compels him to stay until her elderly parents, who have gone on a wilderness hike, can be contacted.
"Snow Cake" unfolds over a few days, during which the autistic woman and the emotionally sealed-off man come to form an unlikely bond. Alex learns to adjust to Linda's peculiar rules and gradually takes on a parental role for Vivienne posthumously. A more likely bond is soon formed between Alex and a mysterious neighbor, Maggie (Carrie-Anne Moss), who lives next door.
The three constitute a kind of holy triumvirate of affective unavailability one cultural (his "English reserve" is alluded to more than once), one clinical and one apparently cultivated. Mysterious as Alex remains throughout the movie other than having a wealthy brother who hates him, we end up knowing nothing about Alex's life except for some momentous but oddly parenthetical events involving his surprise son it's Maggie who turns out to be the hardest to fathom. Her isolation is willed and, it seems, slightly perverse.
She refers to her romantic partners as "gentleman callers" and doesn't feel the need to promote them to anything else. Weaver is eerily affecting as a grown woman with the undeveloped affect of a small child, though in her own way she senses a kindred spirit in Alex from the start. She tells him that Vivienne, who had wanted to be a writer, had a habit of befriending the loneliest people she could find, because they had the best stories to tell.
Alex's story, though it's eventually revealed in teased-out driblets, remains more or less shrouded in obscurity. But Rickman's performance is nuanced and intriguing enough to make his character engaging and compelling. Modest but well wrought and witty, "Snow Cake" is full of unexpected moments and clever observations and, despite a sparse quality, makes a good case for the idea that you're never too late, or too far gone, to connect with or understand others.
"Snow Cake." Unrated. Running time: 1 hour, 52 minutes.
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