TOUCHING WILD HORSES

Canada's Sable Island in the north Atlantic provides the spectacular setting for TOUCHING WILD HORSES a lyrical family drama with only three (human) characters. Guilt haunts adolescent Mark because he avoided the drunken auto accident that killed his father and sister and left his mother comatose. Now the city boy must go to the seacoast, to a cold welcome by the lone relative remaining to care for him, an aunt he's never met. She's Fiona (Jane Seymour), a bitter ex-teacher who for the past 20 years has lived a hermit's existence on Sable, a place that the old sailors called “the dark island of mourning.” No man is an island, goes the saying, but this misanthropic woman might be a different matter altogether, as she sustains herself in solitude on this site for shipwrecks and ghosts. Sable has been a haven for Fiona, who, after scandal capsized her personal and professional career, escaped from the world by exiling herself here to study the flora and fauna, and especially the herd of wild horses who have thrived as descendants of some long-ago castaway animals. Fiona sternly warns Mark not to interfere with the horses, which are under federal protection. Any breach of the law will doubtless be discerned by Fiona's longtime nemesis Charles, a fussy bureaucrat and the only other citizen of Sable. But when a storm leaves one wild pony practically orphaned (not unlike Mark), the island trio must come to terms with each other, and with the past.