Wristcutters - A Love Story – A Love Story

The world might have many people unhappy enough to commit suicide. But the quirky and imaginative Wristcutters: A Love Story suggests there’s a special place beyond this one for those who take their own lives, and it isn’t very pretty. Not that anything particularly bad takes place; it’s just that not very much happens at all. Director Goran Dukic, adapting a short story by Etgar Keret, presents an afterlife for those who kill themselves that looks pretty dreary, full of broken-down cars rotting on roadsides, roommates obsessed with cottage cheese, cops who don’t inspire a lot of confidence, and messianic losers promising paradise if only the dead, well, commit suicide all over again. Into the mucky mediocrity comes Zia (Patrick Fugit), a nice young man who opens his veins and ends up in this limbo for losers. There, he takes a menial job, finds an unlikely friend in Eugene (Shea Whigham), a laconic Russian rocker, and meets apathetic girls in a lousy bar. The monotony of it all is broken up, finally, when Zia gets word that his girlfriend back on the mortal plane also killed herself, prompting him to take Eugene on the road in search of her. Naturally, the trip becomes a journey in unexpected new directions and new hope (particularly when a comely hitchhiker, played by Shannyn Sossamon, jumps aboard), though a diversion at a camp for miracles run by an eccentric (Tom Waits) adds a lot of color. Full of low-key wit and intentionally low-rent surprises, Wristcutters is a vision of the persistence of the human heart even in the most somber circumstances. --Tom Keogh