His adored-yet-faithless wife Petal (Cate Blanchett) died in a road accident after running off with her latest beau while his parents killed themselves in a bizarre suicide pact.

Oh, and to makes things interesting, Petal's parting shot was to sell her only daughter off to an adoption agency to finance her freewheeling ways.

So things are not looking good. Quoyle - kind if ineffective at the best of times - has to forge a new life in a town where his only link is that it is his ancestral home.

"Your grandfather died when he was 12," Quoyle is told. When he replies that's impossible he's warned that he "doesn't know Newfoundlanders".

Home is a leaking, weatherbeaten house, built in full force of the elements and only held down by a few steel cables which anchor it to the rock.

His aunt Agnis Hamm (Judi Dench) is a veteran of Killick-Claw's bitter environment, but daughter Bunny (Kaitlyn Gainer) has more trouble fitting in.

Slowly, he finds his feet after wangling a job on the local rag - The Gammy Bird - and meeting intriguing widow Wavey Prowse (Julianne Moore), who lives alone with her brain-damaged boy.

Life settles down with Quoyle tentatively exploring his friendship with Wavey while rubbing along with his rough-hewn colleagues on the Gammy Bird, including Pete Postlethwaite as the wannabe editor who resents Quoyle's subtle way with words.

After the cloying richness of Chocolat, director Lasse Hallstrom's has struck gold with his beautifully understated dramatisation of E Annie Proulx's novel.

Never an easy book to read, Hallstrom has filleted the meat without losing sight of the surreal atmosphere Proulx created around Newfoundland's heaving oceans and clapboard cabins.

Spacey may be a bit too good looking and fit for the Quoyle of the novel, but his performance is utterly convincing as the decent-yet-clumsy under-achiever finding his level.

There are myriad pleasures to be had - the mystery of the headless corpse found floating in the bay, the Quoyle family's terrifying shipwrecking past and his tentative relationship with the elusive Wavey.

But the real beauty of the movie is Quoyle's awkward discovery of his own worth after a lifetime of undermining at the hands of his father and his errant wife.

There are setbacks and personal barriers to overcome, but Spacey's Quoyle triumphs as a complex but basically decent hero compared with the one-dimensional action men Hollywood seems to prefer. Which is a shame.

Tim Evans