Like A Winter’s Tale, the Shakespearean comedy that Winter Passing frequently alludes to, story is barely comic at first.
Reese Holdin (Zooey Deschanel) is dealing with destructive relationships, drug dependencies, and grief over the recent suicide of her mother. Reese hasn’t talked with her father, reclusive novelist Don Holdin (Ed Harris), since her mother’s death. She seeks Don out, but only because a book editor offers Reese $100,000 to deliver the correspondence her mother and father wrote during their courtship.
Reese leaves New York City for Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where she is shocked to discover that her father is living with two people she’s never met before. Shelly (Amelia Warner) is a kind graduate student who, Don explains, “needed a place to get away for awhile.” There is also the loyal, simple Corbit (Will Ferrell) who is almost childlike in his innocence. Will Ferrell describes Corbit in an interview as a “lost soul who’s found a home.”
All of the main characters are lost souls, but Don, Shelly, and Corbit are building a community together. Shelly and Corbit need a play to stay, and Don is so stricken with grief that he needs people to care for him. (When one of Don’s fans seeks a meeting with the author, the faithful Corbit tells him that Don has “expired. He’s officially concluded all of his earthly business.”)
Every day before dinner, Corbit and Don put on protective gear and tee off in Don’s old study, the room where he found his wife’s body. Reese discovers that the walls are pocked, the windows broken. They don’t explain to her why they do this. I don’t think they need to. Reese sarcastically says to her dad, “You’ve got a little utopia here.” Don answers truthfully, “It works pretty well.”
This movie is full of sadness, but also full of grace. We see hurting people passing from a winter into spring because of the warmth they’re willing to share with one another.
Unlike in A Winter’s Tale, Don’s dead wife does not return to him. But he is not left alone. Don, Corbit, Shelly, and Reese have learned how to be a different kind of family. Reese discovers that her father has completed a manuscript of his first novel in two decades. The man who once wrote “literary nightmares” (in Reese’s words) has written a love story that Reese affectionately calls “a little sentimental.” Don asks her, “Do you think I’m getting soft in my old age?” “Yes,” answers Reese with a smile, pleased.
Don’s new novel is called Golf, which leads us to believe that he is slowly learning how to live through the unexpected and painful parts of life. Winter Passing isn’t a comedy in the sense that you’ll be laughing out loud (though Corbit is frequently delightful); this is a comedy because it shows that grace prevails and good wins.
This is writer-director Adam Rapp's first and only film. I hope he makes more.