Though I continue to have strong reservations about the stylistic abstractions in Ms. Coixet’s narrative, the performances given by Ms. Polley, Mr. Robbins and Ms. Christie take me a long way in accepting and recommending the whole package.

Director Isabel Croixet creates an intriguing, enclosed world aboard the ship

Meditative, slow-paced examination of how post-traumatic stress syndrome affects two troubled people who connect on a windswept oil rig in the Irish Sea.

Like Ceylan -- like many a fine director -- Coixet has made her film less as a drama than as the traversal of a state of mind, a mood.

In due course skeletons will march out of closets, but the movie yields up its secrets with slow reluctance.

A series of conversations that are sometimes clever and sometimes feel like screenwriting exercises about the details of life, but are always well acted.

Far from feeling that we've been hoodwinked into watching a film with a strong social message, we can only marvel at how eloquently and incontrovertibly it states its case.

Sarah Polley is such a wonderful actress, it's a shame she's not a bigger star.

Given the physical limitations of their characters, Polley and Robbins give remarkably compelling performances, and though the resolution of their slowly evolving relationship is a bit too pat, it is one you won't soon forget.