Minutes into this movie when Tomas (James Franco) is driving home through a snowstorm in the middle of some isolated countryside and is involved in a fatal accident, you have this sinking feeling that despite the title, actually nothing will be fine. Despite everyone assuring him that the accident was unavoidable and that he was totally blameless, Tomas cannot help sinking further into the gloomy depths that he was heading for before this even happened. He is a published author who now has a severe case of writer’s block, and also his relationship with his girlfriend Sara (Rachel Adams) has now reached a dead end too.He is not alone in his state of despondency as everyone else seems somewhat miserable in this throughly depressing story directed by the German auteur Wim Wenders from a script by Bjørn Olaf Johannessen. Tomas spends the rest of the time searching for some sort of forgiveness for the young boys death. First with Kate (Charlotte Gainsbourg) the boy’s extremely eccentric mother who quietly tries in vain to reassure Tomas, and offer him some emotional support as she seems to have dealt better with the death of her son than he has.
Tomas than even seeks some sort of comfort from his own elderly father now confined to a Seniors Home, but he is so bitter and angry at how pointless his own life has become now that he is in his dotage, and he is downright nasty to his son.
The action then moves forward a decade and now Tomas seems to have come to terms with the fact that he may never entirely get over the trauma, but he has married Ann (Marie-Josee Croze) a single mother who works for his literary agent. He is not only back writing but his new books have been extremely well received and he is becoming famous as a result of his success. Then into this new slightly fragile set up enters the dead boy’s brother Christopher (Robert Naylor) who had survived the accident and is now 18 years old and looking for some answers of his own.
It is a rather grim affair all around and it is hard to really empathize with Tomas wallowing in self pity as Franco gives such a wooden and stiff performance to the point of actual irritation. Gainsbourg, playing to type. fairs better as the loner who seems to revel in her isolation even though she still comes over as quite morose most of the time.
The biggest disappointment of all in this rather soulless movie with little to redeem itself, is that it is the work of Wenders whose stunning body of work was topped last year with the extraordinary The Salt Of the Earth which quite rightly earned him a Nomination for Best Documentary at the Academy Awards .
