Edge of Madness is a tale about a woman in the 1800's who gets hand-picked by dirty Scotsman who can't keep his penis in his pants. He just so happens to have a younger brother who is against rape and kills him, but continuously says it was an accident. This makes his wife go crazy, she gets delusional and she takes the fall because she loves George too much.Like I said, this type of thing has been done before. This is just more "artistic" because it's Canadian and it's an indie production done on a low-budget with hardly known actors (except that one kid from Lassie, yea, he's in it). I dunno' whether this was going for Oscar bait, but it was sure as hell boring. And this is based on a 40 page short story. Half of that short story is incorporated into this flick, and I'm glad. Otherwise, I'd bore to death. Unfortunately, I had to watch it in my Media Fundamentals class, and I had an assignment on it. Read the short story and compare and contrast the flick to the story. BORING.You know, it's harder to answer movie questions when you don't like the movie. Ah well, I hope this is the last type of assignment me and my class get. For what it's worth, Annie Herron was totally hot, she had a nice, soft ass and I liked the nude parts of her in the movie.3/10 for boring, Oscar bait performance and graphic sexuality..plus nudity.

The acting in this film is superior, beginning with the multi talented Caroline Dhavernas, she steals this film with her electrifying performance and ethereal beauty. Ms. Dhavernas loses herself in this role, and brings such raw emotion to her character that one rarely sees from a young actress.Paul Johansson was marvelous as well, portraying the detective attempting to unravel Caroline's tale of murder and adultery.You'll utterly hate Brendan Fehr's character, he was all kinds of evil and vile, and deserved the end he came to. He gives the Irish accent a valiant effort, but wasn't that convincing with it, although that doesn't tarnish his performance at all.I highly recommend this film to anybody who desires to watch a good character study. You can't help but care for Caroline's character, and will anxiously await how this film comes together at the end.

Unfortunately short theatrical release for this compelling drama.Great look and texture,provide fascinating backdrop for period love/ lust triangle that grows more sides as our beguiling heroine weaves her passive/agressive spell.Not Quite amplified enough for my liking as I hoped the female lead would be a little more cunning and a little less stunning.Very entertaining.

These comments contain minor spoilers:Edge of Madness, also known as A Wilderness Station, is a quietly competent if decidedly uncommercial film about life in the Canadian wilderness circa 1850. It was filmed on location in Manitoba, directed by the same woman who did Better than Chocolate, an international success, and a film I really enjoyed.Sarah Polley was listed as a producer in this film's advance publicity, and she was to have starred as well, but Polley dropped out of the project for reasons unknown to me, and her role went to unknown Caroline Dhavernas. You've never heard of Dhavernas, but she is lovely and definitely has some talent. The role required a wide range of emotional states, physical challenges, a beautiful singing voice, and extensive nudity, all of which she delivered with the aplomb of a seasoned pro.As the story begins, a young woman stumbles into a remote town from somewhere in the wilderness. Half-crazed, starved, and frost-bitten from a long trek through harsh and frozen country, she spins a mad tale of killing her husband. The young man who passes for a constable in this outback hamlet must try to determine who she is and what, if any, truth resides in her story. The actual story is revealed slowly, inside her flashbacks, as he interrogates her.It seems that she was a good and talented student, pretty and sincere, at an orphanage school for girls when she was chosen by a pioneer to be his bride. Although she was originally ecstatic about a chance to begin a life and start a family, her husband turned out to be an emotionally distant man who wanted a wife for the value of free labor, and to act as a release for his violent sexual urges. She therefore found herself trapped in the middle of the wilderness, isolated from human society, with a brutal monster.The young investigator was torn by his responsibilities. The woman had already confessed to actions which clearly constituted premeditated murder under the law. She had waited until her husband's back was turned, then clubbed him over the head with the biggest rock she could wield. Yet the constable and everyone else could see that she was a gentle and good person who was only doing what must have seemed like the only thing she could have done to escape her life of involuntary imprisonment. In order to further accentuate the helpless of her predicament, the story adds a sub-plot about a local man who tried to rape her while she was in her cell, only to be foiled at the last minute by the constable.The film would have been much better if it had decided to follow that excellent premise through to the end, because at that point it was standing very solidly on the kind of profound moral ground normally reserved for Kieslowski, asking the audience to determine exactly what was "right" in this context. She was in fact guilty of murder, but who among us could cast the first stone. Who could prosecute her after knowing her predicament? And if a society does prosecute and hang such a person, what does that say about the value of its laws and institutions?Unfortunately, the director was not Kieslowski, and her source material was not that profound. The story took some easy cop-outs, thus completely resolving the moral dilemma without ever confronting it.In essence, although it is a small Canadian film, it managed to create a Hollywood ending.Even so, the yarn wasn't bad, to tell you the truth. I think the story gave a believable account of life in those times and the motivations of the various characters.My only complaint was that it had profundity in its grasp, and let it go.