Drawing inspiration from the suicide of a childhood friend, the writer and director, Sandra Nettelbeck, orchestrates a story that somehow avoids punishing the audience as much as its heroine. Demanding patience but not blood, the film keenly conveys the profound isolation of mental illness and the futility of searching for someone, or something, to blame. In roles that could have devolved into arias of melodrama, the cast never overplays its hand, fighting the omnipresent melancholy in small ways rather than large.