The first scene, shot in slow-motion black-and-white, depicts the aftermath of a fall of horse and rider from a bridge: urgent, helpless movements of people, close-ups of witnesses screaming silently—all to the accompaniment of the ominous, insistent cadence of the second movement of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.  When the scene changes, we’re placed in our familiar, comforting world of color, in sunny Southern California, though the first frames here feature the fall of palm frond clipped by a laborer, and we proceed into the children’s ward of a Catholic rehabilitation hospital.  We are inclined to wonder of the ways that the pleasantness might be undermined.  Still, crucifixes and crosses adorn the walls of every room, and the environment appears to be one of comfort and healing.  Our sense of this space as one of solace is never really proven ironic or erroneous; what we experience instead is a deepened appreciation for the dynamics, nature, and complexity of the nurturance.  The co-construction of stories by fellow sufferers is key to this.   The film direction is superb in taking viewers into this shared construction: Roy narrates the story, but the depiction of events in that story—the images we viewers see—is from Alexandria’s perspective.  What we witness appears, at first, to be a child’s fantasy.  But the fantasy turns nightmarish and violent, because narrator Roy is, as it turns out, emotionally distraught and psychologically troubled.  The story of the troubled adult is, indeed, a manipulative performance of emotional abuse—which is nonetheless ultimately redeemed by the child’s participation in the story.