This film, shown at both the Montreal and Toronto film festivals, is
so original that its merits passed over the heads of the busy
reviewers.
Scott Reynolds uses a very clever device to allow the viewer to
suspend disbelief that one of the characters could accurately
foretell the future. Heaven, the seer, is a transvestite stripper in a
regular strip club. The viewer focuses on this improbability and
lets the improbability that someone can foresee the future slip into
the film's reality.
Having created a believable character that can and does foretell
the future, Reynolds is then faced with another problem. How to
keep the viewer from knowing the future. He accomplishes this
with a series of carefully staged flashbacks (and flash forwards)
that, although accurate, are out of sequence and therefore lead the
viewer to believe in a series of events that is not accurate.
I have never seen a more cleverly thought up, worked out and
executed script.
With his plan in place, Reynolds creates one of the most
improbable plots imaginable, but because we have moved beyond
suspending disbelief and become believers, one that seems very
probable.
Richard Schiff superbly portrays the character of the strip club
owner, Stanner. Stanner has hired Heaven and brought him/her
under his wing because he has turned Heaven's ability to foretell
the future into profits. Stanner, however, is also involved with
Robert Marling, played by Martin Donovan (II). I would continue to
say superbly, but the fact is, the acting in the film is first rate all
around.
Marling is going through a bitter divorce with the stunning Joanna
Going as Jennifer Marling. Jennifer is seeing the sleazy
psychiatrist Dr. Melrose played by Patrick Malahide.
And in the pivotal coincidence, Heaven is also seeing the
unbelievably evil (but nonetheless believable) Dr. Melrose
because Heaven's visions of the future trouble him/her deeply (the
visions, not the sexual ambiguity).
Marling is a down and out gambling addict, an architect who is
designing a new club Stanner has commissioned with the
millions he has earned from following Heaven's visions of the
future. Marling is forever losing money to Stanner in poker games.
Heaven sets the plot in motion by foreseeing Marling saving him
from being viciously murdered by two sadistic thugs. Heaven sets
out to reward Marling by using his/her foretelling abilities to feed
Marling information on how the cards will fall in his poker hands
with Stanner.
Evil Dr. Melrose discovers this in his sessions with Heaven. He
seduces Jennifer. Advising her on her divorce settlement, the bad
doctor tells Jennifer to hold out for the fortune her husband is
about to come into as a result of Heaven's foretelling, intending to
take the fortune for himself.
Stanner has plenty of cash but can't resist playing the angles,
deciding to burn down his club to make way for the new one
designed by Marling. He hires two homicidal maniacs to do the
task for him, the same two sadists Heaven foresees murdering
him, and it is these two who initiate the mass slaughter that
makes the film so violent.
This film is a sleeper. It will be discovered, its clever features
copied and it will become a classic. Scott Reynolds does not have
a large body of work, but any director or writer would be proud to
have this film to their credit.
