'Smile Back' tracks powerful story of life on the edge

What Adam Salky's "I Smile Back" lacks in insight and understanding about addiction, depression and self-destructive attitudes is partially compensated for by comedian Sarah Silverman's raw, transformative performance as a wife and mother on the edge.

She plays Laney, an apparently normal New Jersey housewife married to a well-off insurance executive named Bruce (Josh Charles). They have two lovable children, a son and daughter.

None of them suspects that Laney suffers from depression, and is on a crash-diving spiral of alcohol, drugs, self-abuse and sexually denigrating behavior. (Why create anything? Why love anyone? Everything can be taken away, she tells herself.)

An opportunistic family friend named Donny (Thomas Sadoski) is more than willing to take time away from his restaurant to meet Laney and take advantage of her emotional vulnerability and low sense of self.

Salky's film, adapted by Paige Dylan and author Amy Koppelman from her novel, early on suggests that the pressures of conformity to a superficial, upper-middle class may be contributing to Laney's issues.

Once her secret life is revealed, Laney heads to rehab where a kindly therapist (Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre co-founder Terry Kinney) gets down to her parent-abandonment issues caused when her dad (Chris Sarandon) took off when she was 9.

Let's not quibble here.

"I Smile Back" is a downer.

It's a domestic tragedy that refuses to traffic in clichés, yet, its central premise - a dependent woman can't break the cycle of falling off the wagon between rehab sessions - erodes the story with predictable disappointment.

Silverman, the tart-tongued stand-up comic known for treading treacherous social waters, confirms herself as a serious actress. If only she'd been given a character supported by a stronger arc.