Suite 16

"Suite 16" has always been a personal favorite of mine. Mostly due to the excellent performances of Pete Postlethwaite & Antonie Kamerling, this gripping drama in psychological and physical control has all the right ingredients to get right under your skin like a bad case of flesh eating bacteria!

Summary: After an argument and fight with a wealthy one night stand in a posh hotel, young hustler Chris finds himself trapped inside. With nowhere to go and the cops closing in on the hotel fast, he wanders into "Suite 16" in a fit of despair. Inside, a handicapped and wheelchair bound Glover (Pete Postlethwaite) is held captive for the evening once discovered by Chris.

However, things change the next day when Glover informs Chris that the woman he slept with is now dead; and that he surely will be sought out for her murder. Lonely and bored, Glover offers to shelter Chris for awhile while the cuts and bruises from the previous nights escapades have time to heal.

Without much of a choice, Chris agrees......and our twisted tale of indulgence begins.

Doting on the boy with his money, Glover feeds Chris, offers him up plenty of booze and cocaine...and lavishes him with hookers at his whim to meet his every sexual desire.

All the while Chris treats Glover like a handicapped gimp, verbally insulting and abusing him during the process. After Chris realizes that his sexual encounters are being taped and watched by Glover in the next room....Chris threatens to leave, much to Glovers dismay.

So Glover makes a deal with Chris--he will pay him to stay and be his own personal porn star--while he watches every encounter from the room afar. Since Chris has dreams of starting his own club in the Carribbean, this offer sounds to good to be true....and he gladly accepts.

However, Glovers demands on what he would like Chris to do in the sack grow increasingly more disturbing, masochistic, and bizarre. Finally, after having enough Chris tries once again to leave.

But this time--Glover offers him ALL the money he will need for his club once he leaves- IF he performs just one sick and twisted act of murder for him.

Will Chris do it?

What will be the consequences of such a high stakes game of cat and mouse?

"Suite 16" is a very good movie with some heavy handed material. However, it is quite intriguing and compelling for mature audiences- and the chemistry of Glover and Chris is quite fascinating to watch as it develops throughout the film.

The DVD transfer isn't all that great (actually it sucks) - but as a viewer without heavy expectations on ratio aspect etc...the annoyance fades rather quickly.

All in all - if you can get your hands on it..stop in and check out "Suite 16".

Highly recommended!

Chris (Antonie Karmeling) is a violent and ignorant small-time Dutch crook. He uses his body and beautiful face to seduce old married women, and then he robs them. One day, after assaulting a friend of him, he steals his van and moves to Nice. There, he goes with an old woman to her room in a fancy hotel, and when he is robbing her, she fights with him, hurts his face and he attacks her. Chris believes he has killed her, and while escaping from the employees of the hotel and from the police, he hides himself in the suite 16. Chris meets the owner of the suite, the wealthy paraplegic Glover (Peter Postlethwaite). They make an agreement, and Chris gets paid for staying in the suite having sex with prostitutes for Peter watch it through a camera. The story finishes in a tragic way. Yesterday I watched this European movie and I found it very intriguing. The character of Chris is violent, ignorant, impulsive, alienated, athletic and makes anything for money (indeed, the guy is obsessed for money). Glover, magnificently performed by Peter Postlethwaite, is the opposite: very well controlled, intellectual (he makes many citations along the film), paraplegic and unhealthy, wealthy and very intelligent, he plans each step, like a cat playing with a mouse before eating it. The story is not well resolved: my impression is that the writer did not know how to finish the plot. This erotic, violent and intriguing film is recommended for a very specific public, who certainly will have the attention hooked along the story. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): `Aconteceu na Suite 16' (`It Has Happened in Suite 16')

In this film of sexual manipulation and head games it quickly becomes clear that Chris, the beautiful hustler on the make is living a life totally out of control. When he first meets wheelchair-bound Glover, he has the upper hand. His physicality and his threats of violence can only take him so far though. As their relationship continues, Glover more and more becomes the one in control.

Many folks reviewing this movie seem to hate it and yet I found the dynamic between the two individuals and their ambiguous sexual orientation was interesting enough to carry the plot along to its eventual conclusion.

That dynamic and the eye candy provided by Antonie Kamerling was certainly enough to keep me interested until the end.

Orange is a difficult color because it doesn't breath life: it's close to red blood and it's the color for rust, decayed things. Now you have been warned because in this movie, this color is everywhere: on the walls, on the dresses, on the bricks, on the video games. It's even subliminal because the movie stars a Dutch man.

This could have been the sequel of "Costa" because it's the same beginning: young Dutch men coming abroad to sea, sex and sun, leaving away their inhibitions at their homeland.

The problem is that such confused adult meets here a disabled man who turned suicidal. The best they can do is to have sex with women, with men. Imagine that for forty minutes, those two lunatic doesn't leave the suite and while one is with prostitutes, the other watches it!

Well, it's really crap, crippled artistic vision. I don't know what Geraldine Pailhas was looking for here. Sure, disabled people suffer from their state and they must have someone to live, but not this way, thanks!

Let me say from the outset that Pete Postlethwaite is one of our best character actors and that Charlea Higson is a fine writer of skewed noir thrillers (read 'Getting Rid of Mister Kitchen' if you appreciate grim, black farce). But what the hell went wrong here? A blond g*t who couldn't act his way out of a wet Kleenex, characters who've stepped out of a bad student improvisation project and sex scenes as erotic as Spam that's been left in a warm place for three weeks. I think there's some statement about voyeurism, sexuality and control trying to slip out here, but I'm too dumbfounded by the abject crapness of the entire project to remember. Are we allowed to give minus points?