I won't spoil the end because I couldn't make it all the way through. I can't even guess at what the end was like. Three-quarters into the story I was exhausted and felt like committing suicide by swallowing a string of lighted firecrackers. Somebody actually tried that once, according to Dr. Carl Menninger.
So far as I can make out, the fundamentals of the story are pretty banal. Sam Neill's wife, Isabelle Adjani, has had an affair with another man, and she may be having an affair with still another at the moment. Why? The new guy is a better lover than Neill.
Neill is supposed to be distraught because he loves her deeply and desperately needs her to come home and reestablish her place in her family, including not just Neill but their young boy.
That's about it for the fundamentals. The way it's written, acted, and directed can only be described as freakish. Sam Neill, for instance, is usually a reasonable kind of guy, a bit of a wimp. But make up has darkened his hair and eyebrows and he looks far more threatening than the pastor who scratched his head until it bled in "Cry In The Dark." Anxiety is his strong point as an actor but here he delivers outrage. His voice is a sneer. He smashes furniture. He beats his wife until bright crimson blood drips in festoons from her battered mouth. When she leaves him, he rents a hotel room and goes on a three-day drunk, after which you can almost smell him.
In fact there's blood all over the place. Neill confronts the other man and takes a swing at him, only to get decked himself. But if Neill is bizarre, Isabel Adjani is plain nuts. She chatters to herself, shrieks constantly, tries to cut off her head with an electric carving knife, beats a detective with a broken bottle until he bleeds to death. What must her thoughts be? She gives us a token. "Fate can control chance, but chance can influence fate, so it it fate? Is it chance?" There's a lot of metaphysical flotsam in the script if you can hear it through the screams.
The director seems to think all this is a superlative idea, shouting, bashing, murdering, glowering. I didn't. I kept thinking that it made the end of MY marriage look, well, what they call "amicable," despite the gymnastics and the silly reports in the newspapers at the time. It seemed to me that if Neill loved her so much, he wouldn't always be batting her around and throwing chairs at her. The only "love" on display was between Neill and his son, and that would better be called affection. The director also has people standing much too close to each other when they speak, as if they were Arabs. If one speakers moves away, the other follows, continually violating his personal space. Sometimes, for no reason, a speaker will slowly whirl around and carome off the walls.
The developments towards the end, about when I tuned out, are impossible to fit into the rest of the story. There is some kind of slimy, blood-covered organism that looks like a squid. It writhes in a bath of gore on a bed. "He's exhausted," explains Adjani. "He spent the whole night making love to me." It's difficult to accept this chimera as Adjani's hallucination because a detective sees it too.
Well. Make of it what you will. It's like Roman Polanksi's "Repulsion," a little, only on methamphetamines.
So far as I can make out, the fundamentals of the story are pretty banal. Sam Neill's wife, Isabelle Adjani, has had an affair with another man, and she may be having an affair with still another at the moment. Why? The new guy is a better lover than Neill.
Neill is supposed to be distraught because he loves her deeply and desperately needs her to come home and reestablish her place in her family, including not just Neill but their young boy.
That's about it for the fundamentals. The way it's written, acted, and directed can only be described as freakish. Sam Neill, for instance, is usually a reasonable kind of guy, a bit of a wimp. But make up has darkened his hair and eyebrows and he looks far more threatening than the pastor who scratched his head until it bled in "Cry In The Dark." Anxiety is his strong point as an actor but here he delivers outrage. His voice is a sneer. He smashes furniture. He beats his wife until bright crimson blood drips in festoons from her battered mouth. When she leaves him, he rents a hotel room and goes on a three-day drunk, after which you can almost smell him.
In fact there's blood all over the place. Neill confronts the other man and takes a swing at him, only to get decked himself. But if Neill is bizarre, Isabel Adjani is plain nuts. She chatters to herself, shrieks constantly, tries to cut off her head with an electric carving knife, beats a detective with a broken bottle until he bleeds to death. What must her thoughts be? She gives us a token. "Fate can control chance, but chance can influence fate, so it it fate? Is it chance?" There's a lot of metaphysical flotsam in the script if you can hear it through the screams.
The director seems to think all this is a superlative idea, shouting, bashing, murdering, glowering. I didn't. I kept thinking that it made the end of MY marriage look, well, what they call "amicable," despite the gymnastics and the silly reports in the newspapers at the time. It seemed to me that if Neill loved her so much, he wouldn't always be batting her around and throwing chairs at her. The only "love" on display was between Neill and his son, and that would better be called affection. The director also has people standing much too close to each other when they speak, as if they were Arabs. If one speakers moves away, the other follows, continually violating his personal space. Sometimes, for no reason, a speaker will slowly whirl around and carome off the walls.
The developments towards the end, about when I tuned out, are impossible to fit into the rest of the story. There is some kind of slimy, blood-covered organism that looks like a squid. It writhes in a bath of gore on a bed. "He's exhausted," explains Adjani. "He spent the whole night making love to me." It's difficult to accept this chimera as Adjani's hallucination because a detective sees it too.
Well. Make of it what you will. It's like Roman Polanksi's "Repulsion," a little, only on methamphetamines.