Tenderness

A man named Eric Poole (Jon Foster), who was sent to prison after murdering his parents and raping a girl as an adolescent, is released back into the free world. Living at home and deciding to investigate the colleges of America, Eric is tracked by a lonely girl named Lori (Sophie Traub). Lori has been following Eric's release in the papers and she remembers meeting him once from a brief chance encounter. After she sneaks into the back of his car, Eric and Lori eventually come together and stay on the road, gradually remembering when they first met. Eric is also pursued by an obsessed cop, Detective Cristofuoro (Russell Crowe), a man who is grieving in having to look after his paralysed wife.

Though an initially intense and interesting film, Tenderness directed by John Polson (who previously made Swimfan and Hide and Seek) remains a rather uneventful and often unconvincing crime thriller. The opening quarter of the film, while leisurely paced, is constructed to develop our interest into how these characters are interconnected with each other. Certainly there are a number of fascinating questions asked; such as why this teenage girl is unconcerned by the dangers of this lunatic and why Cristofuoro himself is to obsessed with his own pursuite, surely not just because of his instincts and his proper sense of the law. Where the film falls apart though is in its undeveloped answers to many of these. The girl's eventual fate is a grim and depressing one, and though we do see portions of her life as being undesirable - her mother has a new boyfriend moving into their house and Lori is forced to flash her breasts for a man's pleasure - there is never a completely satisfying closure to her unhappiness. Furthermore, Cristofuoro's insistence to follow Eric and try to catch him out leaves much to be desired for the character. He does not spend a great deal of time interacting with his target and merely describes it as his hobby. There must be a stronger grudge between the men, than a mere obsession; it remains a rather flat and uninteresting part.

As with the script, the performances of the film are relatively uneven as well. Russell Crowe is always a strong actor but he is at his best in portraying masculine figures of internal conflict. Here he is given a fairly routine and slightly disappointing role. His reliance on an American accent is at times jarring and unnecessary and like in Ridley Scott's film Body of Lies, he does not seem to have a great deal to do in the film. For such a powerful actor, his part is quite underwritten and does not benefit from a substantial level of character development. Sophie Traub as Lori is reasonable in her role, sometimes exuding emotion but occasionally irritable in trying to be funny and energetic. It is most disappointing that we never really reach a deeper understanding of her unhappiness and discomfort in life. It would have contributed a much stronger emotional pull to the film. As Eric, Jon Foster is sometimes intense but mostly blank, never entirely capturing the chilling sense of menace and dread that he could have. There are moments that we suspect Eric may succumb to his desires to kill but this level of tension needed to be more persistent to illuminate the threat that he is. There are certainly some assets to the film; the flashbacks to Eric's brutal crimes are used to show his current struggle of emotions. Yet as with Lori, we never gain a significant insight into his true psychosis.

Tenderness would have benefited from a stronger script that would allow more opportunities to delve into the anxiety of both a teenager and the internal confliction of a teenager. As it stands, it never reaches the heights of a film like The Woodsman and it remains an occasionally intense but mostly routine and flat thriller that owed a lot more to the abilities of its star, Russell Crowe.

Convicted as a juvenile, handsome young Jon Foster (as Eric Komenko) gets out of jail free, despite being a psychopathic killer. Lonely and abused teenager Sophie Traub (as Lorelei "Lori" Cranston) has become infatuated with Mr. Foster, and has been keeping a scrapbook on him. She decides to join Foster on a trip to look at colleges in upstate New York, by stowing away in the back seat of his car. Foster, who is also looking to keep a sex date with another female admirer, wants to get rid of Ms. Traub. But, as they travel, Foster becomes attached to Traub. Then, he learns she witnessed a crime...

Meanwhile, police lieutenant Russell Crowe (as John Cristofuoro) follows the young couple. After helping put Foster in the pokey, Mr. Crowe developed a strange bond with the young killer. Crowe thinks Foster will kill again...

"Tenderness" starts out by having you think it's going somewhere else. It also toys around with eroticism. But, the film is really more like a character study. Foster is a psychopathic killer who Crowe feels is apt to kill again, with vulnerable underage Traub the likely victim. Walking off with the best-written role, Traub actually provides Foster with some measure of salvation. The film is subtly acted and directed, looks great for the price, but stops short of excellence. The character played by Crowe is not drawn well into events; he and his invalid wife are far too detached from the main characters.

****** Tenderness (1/15/09) John Polson ~ Jon Foster, Sophie Traub, Russell Crowe, Laura Dern

could not believe what I was seeing . this film is utter thrash from start to finish . The premise and storyline could have saved it but the script and in particular the dialogue is so poor I had to turn it off. Crowe makes his scenes bearable but the young actress playing the infatuated teenage girl is toe-curling awful and she is not helped by dialogue and nonsensical ramblings that one would expect to see in a film made by a twelve year old. Boring. Badly Acted. Badly directed. Badly shot.....even Crowe at the start takes on the strangest of William H Macy like accents but looses it halfway through the scene and for the rest of the film!! what was that about!?

Terderness is not a thriller, it is a drama with suspense, if you don't get it, then you don't. It is an indie, different, and not a happy one, not by far. It reminds me of the Korean film Seom (The Isle), although it is not as brutal, just as sad. People in it, very well portrayed all in all, are desperate, trying to be anything else than they have to be. It is rare to find this slowly moving film with such strong emotions beneath the surface, specially when the problems are so far off, at least an American one, they are use to be about people finding themselves. This film is about trying to lost oneself. It deserves to get noticed, although I can't imagine normal people liking it. But if you like such films as The Isle, Underground, Funny Games, it is a must.

A rather sombre and one-note film about a young serial killer who manages to escape trial as an adult on grounds of diminished responsibility, and gets released into the chicken coop again when he's 18. A semi-retired cop who wants to get him back in custody and stop any more deaths trails him after release. A young lady who doesn't think much of life hooks up with the serial killer. Brings to life a phrase I recently heard from a philosopher, when we look for romantic partners we look for, "familiar suffering".

The film is about people with meaningless lives, looking for a reason to get out of bed every day other than to continuously reflect on their pain.

Potentially for people who already read the novel, the poor editing is easily overlooked as they know what was going on anyway. Russell Crowe and Laura Dern signed up to the project, perhaps as the novel has received some quite favourable attention, but they don't bring much to it.

The film lacks any dramatic oomph, partly because the cop is a really nice guy who looks at Eric as a young man with a mental illness; and there's no animus back from Eric, simply because he lacks most ordinary human feelings. Although a few people did manage to get happy about Tenderness, it seemed to me like like a roughly hewn film with no outstanding qualities.