Reviews

"Originality" was not an item on the agenda when this film was put together out of old worn-out cliches and stolen visual imagery. I fell for Roger Ebert's hype and went to see it. The serial killer plotline pushed the film over into exploitation movie territory; I think by now I've seen enough movies where the passive female victim waits to be rescued, and the periodic cuts to her in her "cell" failed to generate any suspense or sympathy and just served to underline the exploitation. The plot, as if not dumb enough already, was dumbed down with the help of a stupidly expository script (J. Lopez's voiceovers of "I'm already in", "His victims", and the overemphasised "Aha!" moment with the engraved metal plate), and the allegedly "original" visual imagery was pretty much without exception stolen from somewhere, especially the sequence which followed the Quay brothers' "Street of Crocodiles" (a great short film, by the way) almost shot-for-shot. Tarsem even steals from himself, with the backdrop of the "Losing my religion" video (itself cribbed from Tarkovsky's "The Sacrifice" and the still photography of Jan Saudek, amongst other places) making an appearance in one sequence. (The film makes an excuse for this "homaging" via the conceit that an individual's mental imagery is constructed from that individual's sensory and aesthetic worlds, with a statue of a horse forming the basis for an early scene, and a painting of medieval torture forming the framework of another. ) To sum up: I found the suspense boring, the plot predictable, and the eye candy irritating. A matter of taste, I suppose; you may like it. Just don't fall for the hype.

A cast of "hip" young actors - no, wait, I should also put quotes around "actors" - ham their way unconvincingly through what is at bottom no more than a boy-meets-girl, girl-likes-boy, boy-plays-hard-to-get, girl-gets-boy story. The characterisation of the two quote-buff literary romantic leads is creaky and unconvincing, while Jennifer Aniston is cringe-making as she puts on her fake Irish or Southern or Canadian accents. Some of the most turgid scenes leave the impression of the cast groping for the script, for what was *supposed* to be funny or interesting in the scene, and sound more like readings or rehearsals than actual takes. The invocation of Frank Sinatra as a unifying theme is wearyingly trite, not to mention the invocation of more present-day cultural icons in the "voice of a generation" scene, which was positively embarrassing. The *very worst* scene in the film is the one in which boy does in fact meet girl, in which all the stops are pulled out - the shot, which is in black and white, goes into slow motion as "David" enters the coffee shop, then, when the eyelines meet, there is a transition to color, starting with his eyes, which are of course blue. I felt physically sick. Of course, you might like it.