Reviews

I tried to watch this last night with my wife, hoping for some of the "poetry" I've been reading here about. Well...some nice images, some nice shots, but the "poetry" just made me cringe. My wife got up and left after about 40 minutes, telling me I could finish watching it myself if I wanted to.

I didn't. But I held out for another ten minutes before giving it up. Story-wise, it just seemed like every tired New Age cliché you could think of smashed together by force. And I really have nothing against "New Age" anything...it's just not really all that new anymore.

The movie it reminded me most of was "Altered States"...overwritten, too obviously clever, trite trendy pseudo-science, emotionally overwrought, totally manipulative in every scene, and NOTHING seemed genuine or truly human in any of it.

I like arty films, I like imaginative films, I like poetry. This movie was slight, trite, clichéd, and shallow. I can see how it's target audience would love it, but it makes my teeth hurt to even think about it.

A seventeen year old could do this at home. Here's how:

Take the most low-rent, brain-dead Hollywood teenage Satan-worshipper slasher flick you can imagine. Now: edit out the teenagers, edit out the violence, edit out the gore, edit out anything remotely suspenseful or titillating, and replace it all with quotes from Goethe and Nietzsche. Now,take it all very seriously and say you have an art film.

I guess if you are eighty-five instead of seventeen, someone in Europe will give you a prize. Sort of a sympathy award for a crazy old uncle.

Everything about this movie except for a few shots of the Iberian countryside is appallingly bad. The script has to be the laziest and most inept I have ever encountered outside of a community college classroom. Who knows what Malkovich and Deneuve were thinking if they actually read it before agreeing to make this film (assuming there ever was actually a script that could be read). Who knows what they thought when they saw the rushes. In fact, my theory about the ending is that all the actors (except the fisherman, I guess) simply abandoned the project in exasperation, walked off the set, and never came back. It's that ludicrous and incoherent.

And the Shakespeare theory that is supposedly the inspiration and impetus behind this entire trainwreck...to call it lazy, sophomoric, and stupid is to give it more substance and development than the movie ever bothered to.

Funniest, most unintentionally hilarious moment? When Deneuve tells "Baltar" (I'm not making that name up) how magnetic and irresistible he is. Only a great actress could have done that without needing oxygen almost immediately.