European director Susanne Bier (director of the Academy Award Nominated After the Wedding) makes her American directorial debut with Things We Lost in the Fire. The film centers around a recent widow played by Halle Berry and her two children dealing with the loss of the families patriarch (played by David Duchovny). While grieving, Berry invites her husband’s drug addled best friend (Benicio Del Toro) to come live with the family while they both try to put their separate lives back together, even if she never understood why he and her husband were friends. What unfolds is not just a common story about coping with loss but an examination of what happens when people try and hold their worlds together, even as it falls apart around them. The film treads dark territory, but manages to take seemingly cliché ideas and turn them on their head.