Hateship Loveship

In an abrupt departure from her light comedic roles in movies and TV, Kristen Wiig stars in a solemn but often poignant drama based on the title story in Alice Munro's collection Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Quietly desperate Johanna (Wiig), whose past is a blank slate, is hired as a housekeeper for Mr. McCauley (Nick Nolte) and his granddaughter Sabitha (Hailee Steinfeld). On her first day, Johanna meets handsome screw-up Ken (Guy Pearce), a recovering drug addict previously involved in an alcohol-soaked speedboat crash that killed McCauley's daughter (who was married to Ken at the time). Sabitha and her friend can smell Johanna's vulnerability a mile away: in predictable adolescent fashion they pull off a cold-hearted e-mail stunt involving forged romantic correspondence to Johanna from Sabitha's father. Convinced that Ken is in love with her, Johanna quits her job and moves to Chicago to join him. However, just when the viewer is sure that Johanna is in for the humiliation of her life, her stoic determination turns a seemingly inevitable disaster into an almost too-perfect realization of her ultimate compulsive caregiver's dream of domesticity with a supremely flawed man. Highly recommended. (M. Sandlin)