Inganno pericoloso

A truly masterful piece of filmmaking. It managed to put me to sleep and to boggle my mind. So boring that it induces sleep and yet so ludicrous that it made me wonder how stuff like this gets made. Avoid at all costs. That is, unless you like taking invisible cranial punishment, in which case I highly recommend it.

Women are such cold, calculating and clever creatures. Here, Patsy Kensit teams up with Jennifer Rubin giving a lonely, troubled young farmer (Stephen Baldwin) the blackest of favours. He has vengeance, seduction, excitement but is also corrupted and eventually murdered. Meanwhile the two women acquire money, rare coins, a fall-guy for their crimes, and most importantly, they get their kicks. Its beautiful. Its provocative. But it is on the unrealistic side. There is little verbal communication between the characters. Jolene, the temptress, is the most direct in her dialogue, though she prefers codes and lies. The others communicate almost exclusively through context, body language and sex. I actually really enjoyed this film, but I can see how the general audience could be disappointed. It rents pretty well in NZ, but maybe thats because of the suggestive cover (?).

The first half of this "country thriller" (if I may invent a term) is slow and languid, with an atmosphere of eroticism and barely any plot progression. In the second half the pace picks up a little, but there are too many plot contrivances. Stephen Baldwin gives a pretty bad performance here - I don't know if the popularity of the same year's "Forrest Gump" influenced his acting style, but he often makes his character look like a retard. On the other hand, Patsy Kensit and Jennifer Rubin are well-cast; Kensit probably has the edge in sexiness thanks to her British accent! Fans of either of the three main actors will probably enjoy this; if you're not, you might want to keep your distance. (**)

Moments when you want to tear the videotape from its slot and jump up and down on it until it lies a shapeless, twisted mass of parts, much like the movie itself. The movie piqued my interest at the beginning, with its flashbacks to hooded figures and strange ceremonies in the main character's childhood, but these end up going (again, like the movie itself) nowhere. The director does pull off one astonishing trick. He puts two babes in bed with a young guy for a threesome, and he makes it BORING!! This takes genius of a high order. Bottom line, it's a dumb movie, with a dumb plot, dumb dialogue and dumber action.

Oops. I hired this because I thought it was Bitter harvest (1981), which was recommended. After the appearance of the appalling Patsy Kensit, I checked the recommendation and discovered my mistake. OK, It's watchable, because the main characters are very sexy, but the acting is awful. Stephen Baldwin looks morose the whole time, which is understandable, considering his co-star. Is Patsy competing with Liz Hurley for the title of the most obviously useless actor on the screen?