Keeping a drug addict in your guesthouse might not seem like the best way to get over the death of a spouse, but it does wonders for Halle Berry’s character in “The Things We Lost in the Fire.” Ms. Berry plays Audrey Burke, a beautiful suburban mother whose perfect life comes crashing down after her husband, Brian (David Duchovny), is tragically killed. Left with two children, a beautiful home, and a crushing loneliness, Audrey invites her husband’s best friend, Jerry (Benicio Del Toro), a drug addict struggling with recovery, to stay in her furnished garage.

While the invitation may not make much sense to Jerry or the audience, his appearance has a restorative effect on Audrey and her two children, Harper (Alexis Llewellyn) and Dory (Micah Berry).

The presence of a man in the household gives the family a semblance of normalcy, while his drug addiction and connection to their dead father and husband gives the family a strange sense of displacement.

Jerry’s addiction somehow does not inhibit his ability to raise children or fix the mundane problems of suburban life. Though his bouts with drug use are a bit too well-timed to the plot development (he’s the cuddliest heroin user you ever did see until a crisis is necessary), he has an intuitive ability to help people cope with their problems that is impressively cathartic when it’s not bordering on the cinematically absurd. He helps Dory lick his fear of water, enables the family’s acquiescent neighbor (John Carroll Lynch) to take control of his life, and provides Audrey her only means of falling asleep.

But his ease at helping the family also creates its own tension and the fear that Brian is not being properly grieved. Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier, who directed last year’s Danish entry for the Foreign Language Oscar, “After the Wedding,” maintains an impressive level of tension throughout the film. And the interaction between a grieving woman and a man struggling with his own demons proves fertile.

While Jerry openly confronts his addiction, repeatedly losing his skirmishes with the drugs and forced to confront the shame of his failure, Audrey teeters on the edge of her own misery. Behind the façade of the beautiful, contented housewife is a woman adrift. As Jerry fights to stay on top of his addiction, Audrey searches for a means of quenching her thirst for the life she had.

After having to endure Ms. Berry in a spate of terrible films, it is a joy to see her at the head of a well-run production. She has a skill for depicting sorrow and anguish, as displayed in her Oscar-winning turn as a grief-stricken mother in 2001’s “Monster’s Ball.” But her talents seem to expand or contract according to her surroundings. Her performances in films like “Catwoman” and “Perfect Stranger” were as wooden and hollow as the films they were in.

While her character here doesn’t quite make sense, her fits of emotional rage and barely contained distress match the profile of unexpected grieving. Paired here with Mr. Del Toro, Ms. Berry steps up her game. The two share a powerful chemistry that is kept at bay for most of the film. But often her subtle performance provides a backdrop to Mr. Del Toro’s tour de force.

Squeezed into a suit and tie in his first scene for the funeral, the stylishly unkempt actor looks uncomfortably groomed. Soon we learn that Jerry is not well acquainted with a comb, either. Mr. Del Toro rarely strikes a sour note on-screen, and this film is no exception. Jerry manages intense humor and sympathy while staggering on the edge of destruction. For her part, Audrey used to despise her husband’s loyalty to this addict, and though she begins to understand his appeal, that tension has not dissolved. Jerry’s immediate connection with her children at once comforts and irritates her. Her daughter asks Jerry to be her new father, but Audrey occasionally lashes out. “Why wasn’t it you, Jerry?” she threatens at one point. “Why wasn’t it you?”

Keeping a drug addict in the garage is at once insane and the best idea Audrey ever had. Her needs are taken care of, and she has two adorable children, yet Jerry’s presence is a reminder that she stands on the precipice, capable of losing it all with a few reckless decisions. The success of “Things We Lost in the Fire” is in its ability to keep the audience interested in whether she will.

mkeane@nysun.com