A Rather Subdued Treatment of a Provocative Premise
Written: Aug 07 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: An attempt at a full psychological portrait of a very disturbed woman.
Cons: Not enough spark in story, pretentious or offensive, depending on your view.
The Bottom Line: Not too trashy, despite the premise, but still not great either. A decent try, however.
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| DavidMac's Full Review: Suggested Products |
Suspicious River is a Canadian picture which gives us a very sordid premise, but is somewhat subdued in the telling. That probably wouldn’t stop an old friend, who suspiciously resembled Daria, from saying that this is a “typical” Canadian picture, containing sex and all sorts of depraved material. But she’s not writing this review. In any case, Suspicious River has some interest, but is not all that wonderful.
Molly Parker stars as a very strange woman. She works at a cheap, obscure motel in a small village in (I think) British Columbia, but she seems to do a little prostitution on the side. This involves telling the men somewhat seductively that besides the sixty bucks for the room, she’s charging sixty for some company. Now, Molly Parker is pretty cute, but somehow I think I’d be a little scared off if I were to walk into a hotel and the clerk propositioned me. But from the looks of things, the only guests this hotel gets are those who already know the score before entering.
Of course, the men who get involved are either creepy or abusive, and that includes one guy, played by Callum Keith Rennie, who seems pretty scuzzy to begin with, but when he gets her into his room, suddenly slaps her around before raping her, although she doesn’t exactly put up much of a fight.
Nevertheless, these two people seem to develop some sort of a bond, although it’s not a very pleasant one. Most of their encounters involve sex, and his “compliments” of her, which seem to come from a man who never really saw women as more than sex objects, or who had a real conversation with a woman. He also seems to have a possessive streak, as he apparently beats up another fellow who beat her up.
Another character is a young girl whom Parker’s character runs into from time to time. Other critics of this film say that this girl is obviously meant to represent the older woman as a youth, which seems about right, since a fair bit of the film’s running time involves the young girl and her awkward family life. The young girl’s mother is obviously fooling around with some scuzzy man, and in one scene, the three of them drive off to somewhere deep in the wood, dropping her off in the middle of nowhere while the two of them find some place to have sex. The mother acts like such an arrogant so-and-so, conveying the message to her daughter that this sort of thing is normal. Clearly, such an influence would make this young woman sell herself, and degrade herself.......
But.....I still don’t understand why the main character would do such a thing. Sure, she had a somewhat bad homelife, but I can’t really see how that fits with prostituting oneself in a very strange fashion. Maybe if they didn’t show her past, then her present would be easier to accept. Still, I think the way her past is presented is clever, if pretentious. Certainly it’s a lot less awkward, cinematically, to show the older woman actually talking to her younger self, rather than to arbitrarily jump to a scene from the past. And, overall, at least the film is trying to give us a full psychological portrait, instead of mere cheap thrills.
The movie fails, however, merely because there isn’t any spark. The soundtrack is soft and folky (not exactly American exploitation), and there are quite a few artsy, ethereal scenes and too-poetic lines of dialogue and narration. The film has a rather odd tone -- the story is nasty, but somehow I was less shocked than I ought to have been (except for what happens to her at the end, which is much closer to something that really would creep me out), because the film is rather detached and artsy. I think if the film was a bit more biting, or even a bit more extreme, than maybe the story would be even more intriguing. The ending does provide a bit of a twist, however, showing, specifically, the hidden motives of a number of characters, and, generally, the ultimate dangers of this sort of lifestyle, where trust and honesty are never givens.
The two main performances are certainly good to watch, and the premise is the sort of thing that a truly intelligent creator could make into something other than sheer pornography. The way the premise is treated here is far more than pornography, although Suspicious River is still only average.
Recommended:
No
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DavidMac
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Member: David Macdonald
Location: Prince Edward Island
Reviews written: 612
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About Me:
Alice, a story in nine parts, posted on Sept 24, 2008 - http://www.epinions.com/content_5241348228
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