Characters suffocate under weight of atmosphere in 'Aloft'

<b>Mini-review: 'Aloft'</b>

Claudia Llosa's cold and icy art house family drama "Aloft" should be accompanied by a disclaimer warning viewers of potential post-film side effects, such as depression, drowsiness, muscle cramps and decreased sex drive.

"Aloft" takes a long, frozen winding road to arrive at a climactic confrontation between an estranged son and mother, an event so bleakly anti-climactic and devoid of warmth that the Kansas song "Dust in the Wind" could play in the background.

The drama, covered and saturated by wind, ice, snow and images of despairing isolation, concerns a character named Ivan, played first as a confused boy by Zen McGrath and later as a brooding, hurting man by Cillian Murphy.

Youth Ivan and his younger brother Gully (Winta McGrath) live with their mom, curiously named Nana (Jennifer Connelly), and their pleasant, dysfunctional grandpa (Peter McRobbie).

We slowly catch on that Gully suffers from a terminal brain tumor, forcing his desperate mother to seek out a mystical healer called The Architect (William Shimell), who appears to be a fan of the cult film "The Wicker Man" based on his fascination with intricate constructions of branches, twigs and leaves.

With the Architect, Nana discovers she also has healing powers, but tries to turn a cold shoulder to the gifts and people wanting them.

The adult Ivan spends his time skulking around his tiny, cluttered, ill-lighted home where he tolerates living with his wife and toddler and ever-present pet falcon, sometimes soaring, sometimes a prisoner in a hood. (Ker-thunking metaphor alert!)

One day, a self-professed documentary maker named Ressmore (Mélanie Laurent) comes calling and pressures Ivan to take her to meet his mom, stuck on what could be the frigid set of "The Thing" near the Arctic Circle, surrounded by followers who want to keep the mystic all to themselves.

"Aloft" marks an unrelentingly grim indie drama filled with so much loss, unhappiness and despair that it suffocates these characters.

With an excellent eye for composition and visual texture, Peruvian director llosa, whose last film was 2009's "The Milk of Sorrow," creates nothing less than poetic imagery with Nicolas Bolduc's austere and foreboding camera work.

But like a hooded falcon, the ironically titled "Aloft" is never allowed to soar.

<b>"Aloft" opens at Chicago's River East 21. Rated R language, sexual situations. 115 minutes. ★ ½</b>