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'Winter Passing': Nuanced, but not enough

Thomas Wolfe was wrong. You can go home again, but you may not recognize anything about it when you get there.

Struggling actress/bartender Reese Holden (Zooey Deschanel of Failure to Launch) is the daughter of two famous writers, two literary lions who live a reclusive life in Upper Michigan in Adam Rapp's Winter Passing. When she learns that her mother has committed suicide, Reese reluctantly travels home, motivated more by a lucrative offer for her parents' love letters that were willed to her than by any emotional connection to her father, Don (Ed Harris).

Yari Film Group 'Winter Passing' C The verdict: A grown daughter's return home to her estranged literary-lion father fails to persuade. Director: Adam Rapp Starring: Zooey Deschanel, Ed Harris, Will Ferrell, Amelia Warner, Amy Madigan Run time: 98 minutes Release date: Feb. 17, 2006 Rating: R for language, sexual situations, brief comic violence and some drug use. On the web Official movie site View the trailer    Trailers require Quicktime Rate 'Winter Passing'   Go see it   Make it a matinee   Wait to rent   Don't bother Voter Limit: Once per Hour View Poll Results

Fans of his cult novel People's Park also make pilgrimages to his house, which explains in part why Don has moved into the dilapidated garage, where he sits, depressed and creatively blocked. In the house are two strangers to Reese — his gatekeeper Corbit (Will Ferrell in a straight dramatic role that almost works), a performance-phobic rock musician, and Shelly (Amelia Warner), one of Don's former students, who serves as his housekeeper, bookkeeper and surrogate daughter.

Everyone is psychically wounded in this debut by writer-director Rapp, who wears the film's literary tone too nakedly on his sleeve. The always intense Harris essentially repeats his mentally unstable artist act from Pollock, but Deschanel continues to impress, finding subtle variations on a sullen, neglected child.

Perhaps to avoid an audience revolt, Rapp edges his film toward a ray of optimism near the end, but the move in that direction, like the rest of Winter Passing, never seems convincing.