Paperhouse

This early effort by British director and pioneer of digital filmmaking Bernard Rose (Chicago Joe and the Showgirl, Candyman, Immortal Beloved) is an adaptation of Catherine Storr's 1958 children's fantasy novel Marianne Dreams. Charlotte Burke stars as 11-year-old Anna Madden, a bored, lonely young girl who lives with her mother (Glenne Headly) and whose only comfort is drawing. When she draws a house with a boy looking out the window, she discovers she can visit this place in her dreams. But the boy, Marc (Elliott Spiers), can not walk because she never drew his legs. Back in the real world, Anna learns from her doctor (Gemma Jones) that Marc is a real person, a patient of her's who suffers from muscular dystrophy.

The surreal film comes close to capturing something ethereal and unknowable about childhood trauma, especially when Anna's father (Ben Cross) enters the picture. A dark fantasy that's also a sincere preteen romance should be my kind of movie, but the dream imagery is a bit lacking and redundant, and the main character is just a little too annoying to want to spend a full-feature film with her, especially because this movie has so many endings.