Reviews

I finally caught up to "Starlight" last night on television and all I can say is. . . wow! It's hard to know where to begin -- the incredibly hokey special effects (check out the laser beams shooting out of Willie's eyes!), the atrocious acting, the ponderous dialogue, the mismatched use of stock footage, or the air of earnest pretentiousness that infuses the entire production. This truly is a one-of-a-kind experience, and we should all be thankful for that. I nominate Jonathon Kay as the true heir to Ed Wood!

A propulsive narrative that thrusts the viewer head-first into a maelstrom of international intrigue. An off-handed confluence between corporate greed and dehumanizing sexual imagery that provides a damning indictment of global capitalism. A protagonist struggling with her morality in an amoral world. A punishing but thrilling rock score, courtesy of Sonic Youth. "Demonlover" is perhaps the best thriller I have seen in the past half dozen years.

For the first hour, at least.

After that, the film lapses into incoherence. No, "lapses" is the wrong word -- it purposefully and strenuously burrows ever deeper into incoherence, sequence by sequence, scene by scene. I have never seen a film fall apart so quickly and so completely. Sadder yet, it is the worst sort of failure -- a failure of nerve. Mr. Assayas seems to have lost faith in the intelligence of the audience and ends up indulging the very qualities he was critiquing -- thoughtless spectacle, facile cynicism, and the exploitation and degradation of women. A shame.

Half a mystical thriller and half the fractured fantasies of a fragile mind, "Guardian of the Frontier" is an engaging trip that soon derails. Strong imagery and a compelling premise is soon overwhelmed by incoherent plotting, hackneyed dialogue, amateurish acting, and the most outlandish and over-the-top phallic imagery in recent memory (here, a fish is most definitely not just a fish!). Evidently, this is the first Slovenian feature film to be directed by a woman -- Ms. Weiss must have been determined to prove that she could be as lurid and gratuitously explicit as any man.

I saw this film at the 2002 Vancouver International Film Festival, mainly because I wanted to see if it could transcend the typical limitations of a low-budget thriller. Well, it does. . . and it doesn't. The director gets great performances from his three main actors, and he crafts his material with a strong visual eye. But the story laps into incoherence about half-way through, and it fails to deliver an emotionally satisfying ending. Close, but not close enough.