SuicideNo1

I saw this film at Fantasia quite recently and it completely blew me away. Me and my girlfriend were gonna take in The Lost afterwards but were so exhausted that we just went an' had a few drinks afterwards. This is an extremely unusual film - about a retarded kid who looks after his really ill mom when the dad goes away on business - and incredibly bold an gutsy I think. It starts slowly using locked off wide shots, establishing characters etc, kind of like a poor man's Merchant Ivory (the family in question are on their last legs and so there's next to no furniture etc), and then when you think you've got a hold on it Rumley says f**k you and takes it in a completely stylistic direction with crazy editing, music, camera etc. Initially this is quite jarring but it works within the context of the characterisation and the mental break-down that the retarded kid's going through that in the end I thought it's quite a brilliant device. Ultimately the film is a real emotional grind and deeply tragic but it tackles, albeit in an extreme, visceral way, what most of us at some time, I guess, will have to go through and that's having to look after ailing parents or relatives. There's no monsters in the closet or serial killers here, it's just a very stark consideration of the scariest thing around: the reality of death. This film disturbed the s**t out of me - and I wouldn't recommend it to the feint-hearted but definitely check it out if you're hard enough