This is a genuiely frustrating film.

Unconventional narrative about the interactions amongst a group of people in a small town in Alaska.

Donna, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, is a restless woman nearing middle age; she works as a singer and there have been a number of men in her life, a fact which is beginning to upset her teenage daughter, Noelle, Vanessa Martinez. When Donna meets Joe, David Strathairn, a former fisherman who still can`t get over a fatal boating accident many years earlier and who now works in dead-end jobs, both think they may have another chance for happiness - but fate intervenes.

The first half of Limbo is tantalisingly good - writer-director John Sayles introduces an interesting bunch of Alaskans and, for a while, you think you`re in for another Lone Star, the director`s superb film about the people of a Texas border town. But, about halfway through, Sayles abruptly dumps all of the film`s peripheral characters to concentrate on the plight of Donna, Joe and Noelle, and much of the film`s richness and texture disappears in the process. In the end, this is a genuiely frustrating film.

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By David Stratton

Source: SBS


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