Una

UNA               D                    

Great Britain  Canada  USA  (94 mi)  2016 d:  Benedict Andrews

A truly ugly film, one to walk out of rather than endure this detestable nonsense, something of an international collaboration, where Australian film director Benedict Andrews adapts a 2005 play called Blackbird written by Scottish playwright David Harrower, reviving the play into a film a decade later starring Australian actor Ben Mendelsohn and American actress Rooney Mara, a pair previously involved in a sex abuse scandal with a man having sex with a thirteen year old girl next door, accidentally running into one another fifteen years later, with each confronting each other’s psychological fears and desires.  While there is some question why this was written at all, as who needs to spend an evening with an intimate examination of pedophilia, with much of this feeling leering to the subject matter and overly exploitive, there is definitely an ick factor involved right from the start.  Even worse, by the end this feels like a cop out, excusing and rationalizing the behavior of a pedophile, actually normalizing the behavior in the eyes of viewers, which is treading very dangerous territory. There is definitely a very sick feeling one experiences while watching this film, especially the flashbacks that take viewers back to the scene of the crime, which is shown in a romantic light, as young lovers very much in love, with a beguiling young Ruby Stokes (nothing like Lolita, by the way, as she’s not in the least bit a tease) playing the dreamy-eyed thirteen year old girl who starts sneaking around with the adult neighbor next door, who turns out to be her father’s best friend, where neither one expresses any hint of remorse or moral turpitude, instead they are on the verge of running away together, in the throes of some kind of idyllic feeling of love, where both are clueless to any actual criminal wrongdoing.  Shown in this light, the author dances around the subject while never really addressing any root causes for this predatory behavior, seemingly rationalizing the criminality in romantic inclinations.  This is the most disturbing aspect of the film, creating a psychological fissure between audience and screen, as what’s happening onscreen is not in the least bit eye-opening or revelatory, but is more disturbing and troublesome, as the author seems to be sidestepping the heart of the crime. 

While this would arguably play out better onstage than onscreen, as it’s largely just about two people, with much of it feeling like a day of reckoning.  Opening on Una (Rooney Mara), she is a troubled girl in her twenties, living at home with her mother, working a dead-end job but visiting anonymous sex clubs by night, in a scene that could just as easily be out of Steve McQueen’s Shame (2011), where the soundtrack amps up a particularly provocative song, PJ Harvey - Down By The Water - YouTube (3:31), filled with anger and rage.

That blue eyed girl
Became blue eyed whore
Down by the water
I took her hand
Just like my daughter
I'll see her again

The film transitions into a brief flashback scene as the court is preparing for video testimony from the young reluctant witness, who wants to send a message that she still loves the man who abused her, Ray (Ben Mendelsohn), who is being held on criminal charges.  That scene in itself is as jarring as the song, or the reckless sex in a club, or the passivity on display at home, where the introverted Una is quiet as a mouse.  A newspaper photograph shows Ray at work in a large manufacturing facility, which she decides to visit, saying nothing about it to her mother.  When she arrives at the plant, however, she’s noticeably nervous, vomiting in the bushes of a side entrance where she easily gains entrance to the plant, which has no security measures whatsoever, and allows anyone to enter the premises.  Like a fish out of water, all eyes are upon her as she asks for Ray, showing his picture, but that’s no longer who he is, as now he goes by the name of Pete, where he’s become a well-respected supervisor.  Already we’re getting mixed messages, as it’s hard to conceive how a convicted sex offender could rise to become so successful in his career.  Both politely retreat to a break room with glass windows and a door, where she angrily closes the door before confronting him about what happened fifteen years ago.  At this point it feels a bit like another play (turned into a film by Roman Polanski in 1994), Death and the Maiden, a Chilean reconstruction of a former raped and tortured female prisoner meeting the person years later who inflicted the torture, turning the tables, so to speak, altering the balance of power, exacting her own self-prescribed justice.  Instead, Una’s motives are not entirely clear, as they re-live their earlier experiences through flashbacks and an ensuing dialogue that allows them to personalize what they remember.  While both acknowledge their lives were ruined, having gone through hell afterwards, they’re strangely still engulfed in rhapsodic and even titillating feelings for one another, leaving one with a queasy feeling of unease and dread for having to endure any more of this.   

Rather than any knock down and dragged out fight, everything takes place in plain view at a work facility, where there’s a weird moment when Pete is called away for an important meeting, one with ramifications, an apparent stepping stone in his rising career, leaving Una alone for a prolonged period of time in a strange place, where both appear shocked and bewildered at seeing one another again, where Pete goes off the rails at the meeting, clearly affected by her presence, walking out in a state of extreme embarrassment, perhaps leaving him subject to discharge, hiding from his superiors afterwards, as he’s unable to offer any explanation.  Whatever disconnect existed before becomes even more pronounced at this point, as we’re dealing with entirely extraneous material that is completely insignificant, having no bearing on the outcome, going off on a work tangent that’s probably not even in the original play, creating a feeling of being irreparably lost, as both instead become prisoners in an enormous work environment, hiding out together until everyone else has left the building.  By hiding out, it draws them closer together, both completely oblivious to what’s happening just outside their doors, telling themselves it doesn’t matter, lost in their own dream world as they revisit their shattered memories, even reconnecting a sexual fascination with one another, which only sends out more alarms that something clearly detestable is happening onscreen.  Instead of intimating a more intense reality, which is what most plays do, this one deteriorates before our eyes, becoming more outlandishly false and unbelievable with each developing step, where it’s hard to take anything seriously, as these two are clueless not only to their own existing realities, but to the world around them, including having something meaningful to offer to an audience.  Living in an extravagant home, his former life concealed apparently from his new family, Ray seems to have done all right for himself, where the so-called surprise ending isn’t much of a surprise, as the film, unlike the contemptible figure painted of James Mason in Kubrick’s LOLITA (1962), continually offers him sympathy.  While ostensibly a revenge saga at heart, this one doesn’t go there, though she has every reason to, but instead feels bogged down by the swirling effects of Stockholm syndrome, where the writer wants the audience, like Una, to identify with a sexual predator, and that’s simply not going to happen, spending too much time with her in that adolescent bubble of thinking this is the only guy for her, the only true fit, as otherwise she’s doomed to a life as an outcast.  No one benefits by experiencing that view, as nothing is truthfully addressed, with Ray continually refusing to identify as a sexual predator, which simply lets him off the hook.  Ugh.   

Dead Calm

 

 

DEAD CALM            B+                  

Australia  USA  (96 mi)  1989  ‘Scope  d:  Phillip Noyce

An early film of 22-year old Australian actress Nicole Kidman that made her an instant international star, viewed as a natural redhead before she bleached her hair blond, even speaking with an Australian accent, though it wasn’t until Gus van Sant’s To Die For (1995) that people realized what astonishing range she has as an actress.  Perhaps more importantly, the film is adapted from a 1963 novel by Charles Williams about a couple enjoying a South Seas adventure on a yacht before they intercept a troubled ship in distress, retrieving the lone survivor, altering the course of nature, with none other than Orson Welles securing the rights to the film.  Welles began shooting his own film entitled THE DEEP off the coast of former Yugoslavia in 1968, but like many Welles ventures at the time, couldn’t secure financing, where he was forced to abandon the project after the death of one of his leads, Laurence Harvey, in 1973.  With the assistance of producer George Miller, using the profits obtained from his Mad Max Trilogy to build his own Australian Kings Cross studios, he was able to obtain the rights from Oja Kodar, the widow of Welles’s estate, so long as it was faithful to the original material and wasn’t a commercial Hollywood effort.  However, the film bears a striking similarity to Roman Polanski’s first feature film, KNIFE IN THE WATER (1962), almost entirely taking place on a yacht, exploring the changing psychological dynamic between two men and a beautiful woman, ultimately reduced to a battle of wills, achieving an escalating sense of dread with the wide expanse of the open water becoming an oppressive Shakespearean force that threatens to engulf them all.  Shooting off the coast of Hamilton Island in the Whitsunday Passage of the Great Barrier Reef, beautifully captured in all its glory by cinematographer Dean Semler, the film is a taut little thriller set in an exotic atmosphere of increasing paranoia and dread, becoming one of the better films shot at sea, thoroughly entertaining throughout, showing the deteriorating mental effects of being helplessly adrift, adding further instability from a claustrophobic world caving in on them, with an unusually provocative musical score by Graeme Revell, turning this into an astonishingly suspenseful drama. 

In what amounts to a prologue, we are introduced to John Ingram (Sam Neill), an intelligently reserved career naval officer who is twenty years older than his lovely young wife Rae (Nicole Kidman).  Both are in a state of grief following a car accident that results in the death of their young son, with Rae even more devastated, thinking she is to blame.  Heading off on a seductive expedition to revive their deflated spirits, they seem to have regained a certain equilibrium, with Rae happily swimming in the sea, where this idyllic undertaking seems to have done wonders for them both.   That is, until they eye a ship in obvious distress off in the distance, with the lone survivor rowing furiously towards their ship, where the stranger is Hughie (Billy Zane), supposedly the only survivor from an attack of food poisoning.  As he sleeps off his troubles, Ingram makes a beeline for the deserted ship to investigate, immediately discovering a video log (exactly like they do on Star Trek episodes) that shows their newly arriving stranger is none other than a delusional madman who has killed everyone onboard his mystery ship.  Returning as quickly as possible, he arrives too late, as the stranger has broken his way out of a locked room and taken command of his boat, sailing off in the opposite direction with his wife in tow, leaving Ingram with a broken down vessel and a flooded engine room, with the ship still taking on huge amounts of water, where his immediate goal is to reverse the water intake, pumping the flooded water out of the ship.  Rae, meanwhile, is used as a battering ram by her unexpected guest, knocking her out completely, leaving her unconscious on the deck of her boat, alone with a maniac in charge, who pretends to be normal but loses his patience whenever someone disagrees with him, becoming violently angry, erupting with an unstoppable force, leaving her bewildered about what to do, as she can’t convince him to turn around.  Told the ship is sinking, she’s afraid her husband has little chance of survival.  The cat and mouse psychological game between the two is a bit like Clarice’s prison visits with Hannibal Lecter, as she knows if she sets him off this abominable man is capable of doing anything.     

Meanwhile, back on the flooded ship, Ingram dutifully pumps out the flooded water, where his efforts to repair a sinking ship are remarkable, all done while witnessing a video stream of the former passengers as they squabble with Hughie, becoming especially volatile when they started to make fun of him and stop taking him seriously.  The inside of the ship is a bloody mess, with the dead bodies still floating around, a constant reminder of what Rae is dealing with, as the man is clearly insane.  Attempting to make radio contact with her husband, Rae is able to communicate with Ingram, but she can’t hear him, but can only hear button clicks, where they develop a language of one click means yes and two clicks means no.  She’s relieved that he’s alive and his ship is not sinking, but her troubles are only just getting started, and her panicked guest is overly suspicious of everything she does.  Still, she finds nautical weapons onboard, like a flare gun or harpoon arrows, keeping them concealed for the right moment, as he catches her in the act the first time, only to punch her to the floor, literally terrorizing her at will and seeming to like it, forcing her to accept he’s the man in charge, including raping her, where she’s forced to submit, while in the back of her mind she’s cleverly planning a counter maneuver.  This contentious battle of wills takes on a life of its own, becoming the centerpiece of the film, yet Ingram is facing his own demons back on the other ship, where a storm has knocked out all power, becoming victimized again by surging water intake, trapped beneath the water in a flooded cabin, as both are fighting their own separate battles with death, where Hughie becomes Jack Nicholson with an ax in THE SHINING (1980), an out of control killing machine.  Using a minimalist technique, the acting throughout is riveting, as Kidman’s mousy vulnerability is matched against a demonic monster, while Ingram is up against it in his own travails, beautifully interweaving both storylines, bringing them together by the end, where there is no rhyme or reason to explain why any of this is happening, but viewers are thrust into the middle of it, developing an obvious affinity for the woman in trouble, who is forced to maintain her wits against insurmountable odds, where there is no hope of any cavalry riding to the rescue.  With a perfect title, the harrowing psychological mind games are especially well-played, with long wordless sequences, where you can almost hear viewers yelling at the screen for all the mistakes that are made, yet it’s a compelling adventure that delves into the heart of horror, offering plenty of extravagant eye-candy.