Pacionsbo Absolutely Fantastic

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Erica Derrick By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Guillelmina The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Armand Two brothers. A young woman. A house far from civilization. A murder. And the verdict. Ambiguous, far from justice, fragile and behind rules. A love story. And common sacrifice. A body as frontier between past and future. And present as desert isle. The axis - Caroline Dhavernas look. Axis of story, images, questions about innocence and guilty, nuances of fear and hope and ash of a building who must be, in strange form, the home.A movie as a land in rain. The storm, the wed ground, lightning, few thunders, rainbow, fresh air ,after cried. Mixture of mystery and beauty. A flash tale in which sensitivity and hidden expectations are seeds of passing existences.

TBJCSKCNRRQTreviews In 1851, the young woman Annie is married off to Simon, a nonstop jerk(who you can still somewhat understand the reasoning of... he's proud, a product of his time and pragmatic) but finds herself far more interested in his sweet brother. Divorce is an impossibility in this period, and that leaves only one option if the two are to be together. I got this on sale, as part of a deal, and was honestly surprised by its quality. The acting is pretty good, if the accents switch between not only regions but continents even in the middle of the fairly well-written dialog. This is filmed and edited reasonably well. The pace is tight, there aren't any real slow spots, and in fact this manages to tell a lot in just under 90 minutes sans credits. This goes into the themes of innocence(can it remain intact?) and guilt(who is truly responsible for what happens in this?). A lot of harsh reality in this, from nature and from "the system", and it tends to be dealt with in a believable manner. Perhaps the very conclusion is a tad "easy". Maybe they didn't think of anything better. There is a bit of strong sexuality and violence in this. I recommend this to fans of drama-thrillers. 7/10

zeid A lot of mystery in this beautiful movie as a terrible story unravels (lots of flashbacks). Very good acting, especially from the main character, played by Caroline Dhavernas, about whom Victor Hugo might have coined his famous phrase: "You're not pretty, you're worse."Loved it: 9/10

Scoopy These comments contain minor spoilers:Edge of Madness, also known as A Wilderness Station, is a quietly competent if decidedly uncommercial film about life in the Canadian wilderness circa 1850. It was filmed on location in Manitoba, directed by the same woman who did Better than Chocolate, an international success, and a film I really enjoyed.Sarah Polley was listed as a producer in this film's advance publicity, and she was to have starred as well, but Polley dropped out of the project for reasons unknown to me, and her role went to unknown Caroline Dhavernas. You've never heard of Dhavernas, but she is lovely and definitely has some talent. The role required a wide range of emotional states, physical challenges, a beautiful singing voice, and extensive nudity, all of which she delivered with the aplomb of a seasoned pro.As the story begins, a young woman stumbles into a remote town from somewhere in the wilderness. Half-crazed, starved, and frost-bitten from a long trek through harsh and frozen country, she spins a mad tale of killing her husband. The young man who passes for a constable in this outback hamlet must try to determine who she is and what, if any, truth resides in her story. The actual story is revealed slowly, inside her flashbacks, as he interrogates her.It seems that she was a good and talented student, pretty and sincere, at an orphanage school for girls when she was chosen by a pioneer to be his bride. Although she was originally ecstatic about a chance to begin a life and start a family, her husband turned out to be an emotionally distant man who wanted a wife for the value of free labor, and to act as a release for his violent sexual urges. She therefore found herself trapped in the middle of the wilderness, isolated from human society, with a brutal monster.The young investigator was torn by his responsibilities. The woman had already confessed to actions which clearly constituted premeditated murder under the law. She had waited until her husband's back was turned, then clubbed him over the head with the biggest rock she could wield. Yet the constable and everyone else could see that she was a gentle and good person who was only doing what must have seemed like the only thing she could have done to escape her life of involuntary imprisonment. In order to further accentuate the helpless of her predicament, the story adds a sub-plot about a local man who tried to rape her while she was in her cell, only to be foiled at the last minute by the constable.The film would have been much better if it had decided to follow that excellent premise through to the end, because at that point it was standing very solidly on the kind of profound moral ground normally reserved for Kieslowski, asking the audience to determine exactly what was "right" in this context. She was in fact guilty of murder, but who among us could cast the first stone. Who could prosecute her after knowing her predicament? And if a society does prosecute and hang such a person, what does that say about the value of its laws and institutions?Unfortunately, the director was not Kieslowski, and her source material was not that profound. The story took some easy cop-outs, thus completely resolving the moral dilemma without ever confronting it.In essence, although it is a small Canadian film, it managed to create a Hollywood ending.Even so, the yarn wasn't bad, to tell you the truth. I think the story gave a believable account of life in those times and the motivations of the various characters.My only complaint was that it had profundity in its grasp, and let it go.