01
The Sweet Hereafter
Why this pick
Like Limbo, it lets a close-knit, wintry community reveal itself through accumulated grief, fractured loyalties and quietly shifting perspectives rather than easy resolutions.
A FILM WORTH A CLOSER LOOKTHE FEATURE PRESENTATION
MOVIE1999 2h 6m USA
IF THIS ONE STAYED WITH YOU
Movies like
Limbo
AdventureDramaThriller
CINEHUNCH / THE NEXT FRAME
Keep the feeling.
SIMILAR PICKS / A PERSONAL CONNECTION
If you loved Limbo, try these.
01
02
Frozen River
Why this pick
Its harsh northern border setting, economic precarity and unsentimental intimacy echo Limbo’s attention to people making morally complicated choices in a place with few exits.
03
Affliction
Why this pick
A cold, economically worn small town becomes the pressure chamber for buried history, family damage and a slow-building mystery, with the same bruised regional realism.
04
Passion Fish
Why this pick
Another patient Sayles ensemble, this time on the Louisiana coast: sharply observed working lives, difficult friendships and emotional recovery unfold with generous but unsparing texture.
05
The Shipping News
Why this pick
Its remote maritime community, weather-beaten visuals and damaged protagonist searching for a usable future make it a warmer, more fable-like companion to Limbo.
Finding the atmosphere, tension and little details that made this one stay with you.
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01 / THE STORY
A little about the film.
Port Henry, Alaska, is a town undergoing stress as the local economy switches from an industrial one based around the canning and paper industries towards a tourism-based model. Joe Gastineaux is a former high school basketball star and fisherman who quit fishing after some undisclosed tragedy. He now works as a handyman, particularly for Frannie and Lou, a lesbian couple who own the local resort hotel. Joe is friends with teenager Noelle De Angelo who also works for Frankie and Lou. At an event which they are working, Noelle's mother Donna, a lounge singer, breaks up with her live in boyfriend and asks Joe for help in moving. The two become close and eventually begin a romantic relationship. Meanwhile, Joe gets the chance to return to fishing when Frankie and Lou ask him to work a fishing boat which they have acquired as collateral from local fisherman Harmon. Donna has a strained relationship with her daughter Noelle, due mainly to Noelle's disapproval of her mother's lifestyle. This is exacerbated when Donna begins dating Joe, who Noelle had a crush on. Donna overhears the story of why Joe quit fishing: he had been involved in a deadly sinking which claimed the lives of all of his boatmates, including the brother of local bush pilot and small-time criminal "Smilin Jack" Johannson.
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02 / FACES IN THE FRAME
The people who bring it to life.
Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio
Donna De Angelo
Vanessa Martinez
Noelle De Angelo
Kris Kristofferson
'Smilin' Jack Johannson
David Strathairn
'Jumpin' Joe Gastineau