After opening last year with In Bruges, a film packed with star power and scheduled to open in theaters the following weekend, Sundance has chosen this year to open edgy and unpredictable.  It is not just that Mary and Max is an independent claymation flick from Australia, with a darkly comic theme about a lonely and misunderstood 8-year-old girl who strikes up an unlikely and disturbing correspondence and friendship with a 48-year-old overweight depressive male diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome.  What was truly unexpected was the moving power of its simple message, achieved without resorting to sentimentalism or cliché.   (more…)