Fall

Veteran character actor Michael Murphy is the principal reason to see this agonizingly evasive drama about an elderly priest who might or might not have committed an act of sexual abuse decades ago. As Father Sam Ryan, Murphy is mesmerizing as an active—albeit weary—cleric looking after his small community of parishioners on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. With his days consisting of a series of exhausting rituals including saying the mass at a retirement home, delivering last rites, and hearing maddening confessions, Father Sam grabs moments of privacy to enjoy silence or tend, by phone, to the care of his nonagenarian mother in northern Ontario. Writer-director Terrance Odette has a good feel for the mix of isolation and intense responsibilities that are the burden of a career priest, but he is cagey when it comes to forming a clear narrative. The arrival of a letter from a dying, middle-aged man, alluding to a blurry memory of sharing a bed with Father Sam 40 years earlier, stirs the pot a bit story-wise, but Odette is intent on dragging this plot strand out. And that's a shame, because some scenes are quite moving, including a counseling session for a young, distressed woman terrified that her upcoming wedding will fall apart, and another in which a gay Iranian man rants about the Catholic Church. A strong optional purchase. (T. Keogh)