Premiere: 'Incendiary'

Got into my first screening tonight -- the premiere of writer-director Sharon Maguire's "Incendiary."

Michelle Williams stars as an unhappy working-class British mom (named in the credits as Young Mother), who is passionate about her son, but seems frustrated with her husband, who works on Scotland Yard's bomb squad and never seems quite present.

One night, she embarks on an affair with her hotshot journalist neighbor, played by Ewan McGregor. But in the midst of carrying on this affair, her world is destroyed when her son and husband are killed in a massive suicide bombing.

What follows veers uneasily between melodrama and thriller, with the melodrama elements being much stronger, thanks in large part to the heartbreaking performance of Williams as a woman wracked with equal parts guilt and anguish.

She finds herself being pursued by McGregor -- the shifty Lothario -- and her husband's awkward colleague, played by Matthew Macfadyen. She also finds herself drawn in a mothering way to the young son of the suicide bomber who killed her husband.

"Incendiary" is director Maguire's follow-up to "Bridget Jones' Diary," and one could see Williams' plight as the very-very-not-funny version of Bridget Jones -- she's surrounded by men who just aren't right for her. The title could also be used to describe a very explicit sex scene that occurs between McGregor and Williams early in the movie.

Reaction to the film, which was just complete on Friday, seemed to split down gender lines, with the female audience members I talked to gushing about how their maternal instincts kicked in when seeing Williams' aching love for her lost child, while their stoic boyfriends shrugged and mumbled platitudes about Williams' performance.

Maguire seemed to channel Bridget Jones herself in her opening remarks: "I'll keep this introduction brief, because I'm holding my stomach in to appear thinner and I'm likely to expire soon."

If there was a disappointment to the screening, it was the lack of star power. Williams is in Sweden filming another movie, and McGregor, the evening's true draw (judging by the number of "Moulin Rouge" DVD cases I spotted) merely sent a videotaped greeting. That didn't stop fans from snapping lots of pictures of his face onscreen.

Considering that some audience members laid out some impressive cash to get inside, I guess it's only fair that they tried to get their money's worth.

-- Patrick Day

(Photo courtesy Associated Press)