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eglinton02
Reviews
Side Effects (2013)
Entangled with a wounded bird.
Intense psycho-drama, in which much of the action is in people's heads, but still gripping to watch. Jude Law as a tame and affable psychiatrist getting entangled with Rooney Mara: she reaches out with an appealing 'wounded bird' look, as one character remarks, but of course in cinema that may well lead off to bunny boiler territory. The motivations stretch plausibility at times but one tolerates that to enable the tone of shifting doubts, and the cinematic impact of several shocking and sudden switches of perspective. Blithely disrespectful too of mental health treatment and practices: who is faking what? – with all the cans of worms that opens up. The main characters are superbly acted and searchingly portrayed, with some good craggy character-acting, Law & Order style, from the supporting cast. Beautifully shot amidst luscious NY professional and prosperous interiors.
Door Out of the Dark (2007)
Beautifully staged mood-piece
Beautifully staged and shot, and carefully constructed, this short film is very psychologically intense. With overwrought acting and underspecified context, it feels firmly in the realm of the ethereal. (like: where is this, who are these people, what is their history? We get no sense of the characters' normal existence, so they seem almost supernatural. The viewer may experience the presentation more as a mood-piece than a narrative, so need not fret about the plausibility of the lead character's motives and development. In any case, the release she achieves at the end clearly carries a feeling of relief, if not resolution, for the viewer. Well worth seeing.