Fantasmas da Guerra

It's easy to see why so few people seem to have connected with this underrated movie. There's no nudity, no violence, no killing, no superstars chewing up the scenery. It is, instead, a quiet, maybe too slow-moving, film about a teenage girl at the cusp of womanhood trying to learn about what Vietnam had been like for her father, who was killed there. She also begins to see her ex-G.I. uncle clearly, for the first time, as a survivor of something terrible.

In Country is about the Vietnam War only as in the sense that it's also about a family's history whose impact bridges the generations. It's less about events than it is about becoming a grown-up in an America that has a sixty-second attention span and a fifteen-minute memory.

Emily Lloyd, who you'd never guess is English, does a beautifully sensitive job in the starring role, and Bruce Willis, as her uncle, turns in a very fine, very dignified performance.