Everyone and everything is surprising in this arresting film whose heart is as warm as its setting is cold

in the end, it's as viable as its titular confection: pretty to look at but cold.

It's essentially a vehicle for a dedicated cast, but occasionally it's more than that.

Three very intelligent actors -- Rickman, Moss and Sigourney Weaver -- elevate what could have been cloying into something better than the script's idiosyncratic bent.

Director Marc Evans, working from Angela Pell's screenplay, pulls it off in a limited way but with emotional sensitivity and a solid cast.

At times it seems so anxious to blatantly manipulate us into tears and slows down with Alex’s romance with a sexy neighbor a la Carrie Anne Moss, and then at times it’s beautiful, and intimate, and so wonderfully acted.

Weaver makes Linda her own, alternating between off-putting brashness, engaging honesty and bursts of spontaneous, childlike behavior.

Weaver and Rickman and screenwriter Angela Pell elevate the film into something quite endearing.

Marc Evans' small-scale drama focuses on the offbeat relationship between a chronically depressed man and an autistic woman, and with a lesser cast it would be insufferable.