A very melancholy evening in the cinema. Philip Seymour Hoffman stars as Wilson, a software technician undergoing an agonisingly drawn-out breakdown after the suicide of his wife Liza - a breakdown that we watch in almost real time, fragmented into long and sometimes wordless scenes of catatonic despair, while Wilson delays the ordeal of opening the suicide note.

The script is by Hoffman's brother Gordy Hoffman, and directed by Todd Louiso who, as an actor, played the mousy record-store employee in High Fidelity.

Writer, director and star between them have composed an intelligent and harrowing movie, and there's a powerful performance from Hoffman, an actor of whom expectations are now always sky-high.

But Liza's absence becomes frustrating. Why did she commit suicide? How was her relationship with Wilson? These questions are never answered, and the figure of Liza's grieving mother Mary (Kathy Bates) oddly doesn't shed much light either. All that is left is a painful void. Perhaps that is what bereavement is.