I see why this one's widely panned. Another movie best enjoyed with a minimum of thought: Boy meets Girl, Boy loses girl for 15 years, Girl searches and finds boy, the reunion occurs, Boy is shot and drops dead.
This simple business is embedded in a bizarre and busy plot. The thing is, there are some very smart bits floating around in the soup: Oscar, "O", and Peaches, become child-lovers while waiting for the "fated" reunion with Loux. They grow into criminal androgynes and are crudely manipulated by their twisted, jealous and covertly sadistic boss, "Birdie", Ron Perlman, who has a thing going with "Peaches", 50 years his junior, so wants to rip "O" and her apart.
Then, "Sway", Mark Boone Junior, the Faginesque character who makes open reference to Oliver Twist, chomping heart pills like M&M's for his arrhythmia, who finally gets his guts blown out with a 12 gauge by a manipulated Peaches, because "He has a heart problem, it's too big."
A note on the obvious literary references: Dicken's, Romeo & Juliet, Frankenstein, (The Michael Pitt creation) and You Can't Go Home Again, is that they are more or less obvious and awkwardly sutured together, Frankenstein stuff, in this sutured together movie.
These touches are built in and not a big deal is made of them. So the movie is devious, like the characters. The smartest bits are right out there, little subconcious bombs, like after-tastes. These are the best parts of the movie. Interesting players too: It's nice to see William Forsythe again, this time playing a strict dad. If there was ever a natural born bad guy, it's him. And he's put back every pound of the weight he made such a point of losing for much of his career. He looks like himself again for the first time in 30 years.
I agree with the crowd that the movie is a mess. But....it's "shot with sugar, through and through."
This simple business is embedded in a bizarre and busy plot. The thing is, there are some very smart bits floating around in the soup: Oscar, "O", and Peaches, become child-lovers while waiting for the "fated" reunion with Loux. They grow into criminal androgynes and are crudely manipulated by their twisted, jealous and covertly sadistic boss, "Birdie", Ron Perlman, who has a thing going with "Peaches", 50 years his junior, so wants to rip "O" and her apart.
Then, "Sway", Mark Boone Junior, the Faginesque character who makes open reference to Oliver Twist, chomping heart pills like M&M's for his arrhythmia, who finally gets his guts blown out with a 12 gauge by a manipulated Peaches, because "He has a heart problem, it's too big."
A note on the obvious literary references: Dicken's, Romeo & Juliet, Frankenstein, (The Michael Pitt creation) and You Can't Go Home Again, is that they are more or less obvious and awkwardly sutured together, Frankenstein stuff, in this sutured together movie.
These touches are built in and not a big deal is made of them. So the movie is devious, like the characters. The smartest bits are right out there, little subconcious bombs, like after-tastes. These are the best parts of the movie. Interesting players too: It's nice to see William Forsythe again, this time playing a strict dad. If there was ever a natural born bad guy, it's him. And he's put back every pound of the weight he made such a point of losing for much of his career. He looks like himself again for the first time in 30 years.
I agree with the crowd that the movie is a mess. But....it's "shot with sugar, through and through."