Waking The Dead

An unlikely 70s romance between a Catholic activist (Jennifer Connelly) working with Chileans and a young mainstream liberal politician (Billy Crudup) ends when she’s killed in a car bombing, but he can’t shake her memory. Keith Gordon’s haunting and heartfelt feature, adapted from a Scott Spencer novel by Robert Dillon, may be rough around the edges, and the allegorical and political aspects of the story won’t be to everyone’s taste, yet Connelly’s unshowy performance is so sensational that it makes up for lots of problems. The story ricochets between the 70s and 80s with such purity of emotion that the storytelling never falters, even when some of the secondary characters fail to convince. Jodie Foster served as executive producer, and she and Gordon should both be commended for getting behind an offbeat project of this kind. (JR) Read more