or those who appreciate a solid pull at the heartstrings, Things We Lost in the Fire - Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's first English-language film and follow-up to the Oscar-nominated After the Wedding - is one of the more somber releases of the season.

Set in Seattle (but filmed in British Columbia), Benicio Del Toro is Jerry Sunborne, a forty-something hardcore junkie, intermittently recovering and living in squalor. Suddenly, he's forced to re-examine his life after his best and only friend, Steven Burke (David Duchovny), has been killed trying to stop a marital quarrel outside an ice cream parlor.

The widow, Audrey (Halle Berry), never trusted Jerry even when her husband was alive. But she invites Jerry to move into her garage and perhaps do household chores after realizing that it will help her son and daughter to have someone else around. Eventually, Audrey forges a complicated bond call with him, seeking the comfort to fill her new emotional and domestic void.

But Jerry is a heroin addict, whose life has been a long, downward spiral and his friendship with Burke’s husband over the years had caused heavy animosity because of her husband's constant attempts to help him break the cycle of addiction.