I've had this movie on my watch list for a while, being a bit of a Fassbender and a Mulligan fan and had just been waiting for the mood to strike me. I'm not sure exactly what I was expecting, a friend's reaction when I'd asked him if it was any good had been to cover his face and wail at me through his fingers so I knew it wasn't going to be pretty.
Right from the get-go the film reminded me a lot of a Brett Easton-Ellis novel, partly the setting and protagonist - sleek, city bachelor apartment inhabited by chiselled, cold eyed bachelor - but also the deep undercurrent of unease and darkness that seemed to run through it. Brandon is a handsome, successful man who knows just how to talk to women to get what he wants, but something behind his eyes tells of a lack of understanding for any of the people he deals with. He's permanently elsewhere, fixated on something really basic and primal, and missing what for most people is the meaning of life: connection.
When Cissy arrives we at last see a glimmer of a real human being. Brandon cares deeply for his sister, very probably she's the only person he has ever really allowed himself to care about, and yet still feels the need to keep her at arms length. "Why are you always so angry with me?" Cissy asks, and the answer is very simple, because Brandon cares and caring makes him feel vulnerable, something he seem unable to be with anyone else.
A fantastic character study that left me full of questions and of sadness that men that Brandon exist.
Right from the get-go the film reminded me a lot of a Brett Easton-Ellis novel, partly the setting and protagonist - sleek, city bachelor apartment inhabited by chiselled, cold eyed bachelor - but also the deep undercurrent of unease and darkness that seemed to run through it. Brandon is a handsome, successful man who knows just how to talk to women to get what he wants, but something behind his eyes tells of a lack of understanding for any of the people he deals with. He's permanently elsewhere, fixated on something really basic and primal, and missing what for most people is the meaning of life: connection.
When Cissy arrives we at last see a glimmer of a real human being. Brandon cares deeply for his sister, very probably she's the only person he has ever really allowed himself to care about, and yet still feels the need to keep her at arms length. "Why are you always so angry with me?" Cissy asks, and the answer is very simple, because Brandon cares and caring makes him feel vulnerable, something he seem unable to be with anyone else.
A fantastic character study that left me full of questions and of sadness that men that Brandon exist.