I recently saw two films which covered controversial, perhaps even taboo, subject matter. The first was Spanking The Monkey, a serious film about a young man who, despite winning a prized internship, spends his summer stuck at home caring for his bed-ridden mother. While some label the film a comedy, it is funny for its black humour, which delves deep into realms that few films are willing to roam, notably suicide and incest. Thankfully, the playful title does not belie the smartness of the film, which tastefully deals with such delicate items, giving them the attentive thoughfulness that they deserve. Without any music soundtrack, the movie has that dull, undertoned prevalent in independent features, which only helps to focus the viewer on the scenes. I wouldn't say that I necessarily liked the film, but I thought it was interesting, and certainly had me chuckling. The other film may have passed under your radar, as it did mine: Quills, which stars Geoffrey Rush in a role that may be among his defining characters. It is the story of the Marquis de Sade, spending his later days in an asylum, locked up but not prevented from producing scandalously erotic novels. He smuggles them out with the help of a chambermaid (Kate Winslet), and you detect (rightfully) that there's a bond there, although its nature is only painfully clear after it is forceably ended. Joaquin Phoenix (as the Abbe du Coulmier, director of the asylum) and Michael Caine (as Dr. Royer-Collard, a grim character that reforms the mentally insane with barbaric torture) fill out the cast, but it is Rush's take on de Sade that makes the film. They have made him a complex, human character, with doubts and wants and regrets. His tragedy lies in simply in who he is, a man who cannot repress his ability to think, to write about, well, sex and all things in-between. And so he remains faithfully true to himself, and only at the end, when he can bear the consequences no longer, does he relent and in so dies. I'm skipping over most of the details of the film, but I'm sure you can guess at them -- so be ready for scenes of rape, necrophilia, torture, etc. At times delightful and tongue-in-cheeky, with turns of sadness and lament. Sometimes even shocking, but not out of cheapness. Certainly never dull or predictable.
[Comment on the above] |