Smilla's Sense Of Snow

Present-day Copenhagen. Six-year-old Greenlander Isaiah falls from an apartment-building roof. The police claim it was an accident. But Smilla Jasperson (Julia Ormond) knows Isaiah was afraid of heights. She is an expert in snow and, after examining his tracks, is sure Isaiah was terrified when he ran off the roof. The heroine of Peter Hّeg's novel SMILLA'S SENSE OF SNOW is a unique creation--half Greenlander, always an outsider, she is spiky, determined, and brilliant. In Bille August's movie, the beautiful Ormond conveys Smilla's intelligence and hostility as, full of suspicion and resentment, she investigates. She questions police and medical experts, discovering a muscle sample was taken from Isaiah's leg after he died. She ferrets out officials of the mining company where Isaiah's father worked before dying on a secret expedition. She learns from Elsa Lübing (Vanessa Redgrave) that the company keeps two sets of files. And she discovers there are those who want her investigation to stop. Sometimes helped, sometimes hindered by the mysterious Mechanic (Gabriel Byrne), Smilla pursues the riddle of Isaiah's death.