Bella

When the great philosopher Tennessee Williams (who also happened to write a few plays) said, ''Hell is yourself and the only redemption is when a person puts himself aside to feel deeply for another person,'' it's possible to imagine he had just watched Bella.

Ask Jose or Nina, and I think they would both agree with Williams. Jose was once a striking young soccer player with a trophy girlfriend and a bright professional future. Now we find Jose working as a chef in his brother's restaurant, and in flashbacks throughout the movie we learn how a single tragic mistake took him from the stadium to the kitchen. Nina is a young single woman who is a waitress in the same restaurant. Or at least she was, since she is fired on the day we meet her, the same day she learns she is pregnant.

By fate and an act of spontaneity on the part of Jose, the two spend a day together in New York. As morning becomes noonday, giving way to evening and then night, we follow the happenstance couple from the subway to the beach and get to know both of them as they are getting to know each other. Each is living in a personal hell from which it seemed there was no escape until this day when they are brought together. We learn how Jose's mistake haunts him--how he lost his passion for the beautiful game and why he never drove his car again. We learn how a 12-year-old Nina lost her father and then lost her mother to the grief in the following years.

The movie speaks to us because it reflects our own experiences. Life is a minefield of pain and problems, and--try as we might to avoid them, we still step on many and are maimed so badly we cannot continue to walk. Yet there is no escape by avoiding the mines, only by redemption afterwards, like a surgery that gives us feet to walk on again. This is the redemption that we find in Bella. This is exactly what Jose and Nina find when they learn to care deeply about someone other than themselves.

At the Toronto Film Festival last year this small-budget film took the People's Choice Award because it's a film about us. Bella could be about our family or the families in our neighborhood. The way Jose's family alternates speaking Spanish and English in the same conversation reminds me of a family that lives down the street. Nina could be the single girl that lives in the apartment next to me. The New York backdrop is one shared by eight million others, yet this movie could be set in any other American city. The movie's message is communicated strongly because we can relate to the characters. It is almost like we are one of them.

Bella shares our grief and our joy, and shows us the bridge from the former to the latter. The conclusion of the movie is surprising, and not a ''happily ever after'' ending. And yet, we know as it ends that everything is all right, not because everything will be perfect, but because as long as mistakes are made, redemption can follow.