Halle Berry has chosen her projects less than wisely since her Oscar-winning performance in Monster's Ball. But this film, produced by Sam Mendes and directed by Denmark's Susanne Bier, at last gives her a part to chew on.

Added to that, there's the charismatic Benicio Del Toro, of 21 Grams fame, playing opposite her, which would keep any actress on her toes.

She is Audrey, young and newly widowed, grieving for the loss of her husband Brian (David Duchovny) who gets shot in the street while trying to save a woman from her psychopathic lover. We see her and the two children at the funeral and also Jerry (Del Toro), her husband's best friend.

He is a recovering heroin addict and regards Brian as the only friend who stuck by him. He wants to help but doesn't know how. In most Hollywood films, the two would gradually fall in love.

But Bier, Oscar-nominated for After the Wedding, doesn't have much truck with such clichés. She deals in a more uncomfortable kind of intimacy, using close-ups, especially of eyes, as "windows of the soul".

In one of the film's best scenes Audrey - who has invited Jerry to stay in the spare room rather than using a local clinic as a refuge - tells him to get into her bed, lie next to her and stroke her earlobes like Brian did when she couldn't sleep. There's no sex, just comfort.

We know Jerry might like a bit more than that, and that her children begin to regard him as their substitute father. But we also know that Audrey is still in the depths of despair, refusing to sort her husband's clothes. We are also told that Audrey despised Jerry while her husband was alive and that her contact with him now could turn poisonous.

Everything in the film, very European in its pace and subtlety, depends upon the performances. And Del Toro is particularly good at showing how his addiction has made him hesitant about any kind of relationship.

Berry shows that Monster's Ball was no fluke and that idiot films like Gothika and X-2 were not worthy of her. She never overplays, but her quiet desperation is signalled with subtlety.

The children (Alexis Llewellyn and Micah Berry, no relation) are good too, playing naturally and with an understanding of their parts as their world collapses around them and the affection of the new man in their lives becomes more real.

Things We Lost in the Fire is not perfect and there are times when you feel that this kind of story might have been stronger still had Bier made it in her native Denmark.

But, though this is a sombre film, it is never a depressing one, and its open ending allows us to feel that here is a director who wants to do more than just send us comfortably home.