Post by avalon on Oct 27, 2007 2:59:00 GMT 9.5
Director drops Puffball
Only a very talented director could make this load of dreamy Irish symbolism work. Unfortunately, Nicolas Roeg isn't up to the task,
writes Jay Stone.
Jay Stone, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, October 26, 2007
A new movie by the atmospheric stylist Nicolas Roeg is always an occasion, and so we salute Puffball, a madcap slice of what someone calls "bloody voodoo palaver" that doesn't make sense, exactly, but comes laden with enough dreamy symbolism to fill your Halloween bag.
Puffball is the kind of absurd mess that only a talented director could pull off, and even at that, Roeg is pushing the envelope.
It takes place in Ireland and if you want a quick explanation, it's sort of Straw Dogs meets Rosemary's Baby, except that the devil is replaced by Rita Tushingham, the 1960s British pixie (A Taste of Honey) now grown into an age where she can persuasively play a puckish witch. Unfortunately, there can't be much demand for them.
The witch's name is Molly and she springs into action when lovely Liffey (Kelly Reilly, last seen starkers in Mrs. Henderson Presents) arrives at an isolated cottage in Ireland. Liffey and her American boyfriend (Oscar Pearce) have bought the cottage and are going to renovate it -- she's an architect -- and we are meant to be haunted by several scenes of past goings-on that have something to do with a fire and a baby crying. The fire looks especially computer-generated.
Molly and her family used to own the cottage and still live nearby. Her daughter, Mabs (Miranda Richardson, playing an Irish Earth Mother) has three girls but wants a son, and it appears that Liffey is either threatening that goal or has somehow stolen Mabs's last chance at pregnancy.
In any event, Molly is seen making little straw effigies and cooking up love potions that involve vodka, worms and something taken from a used condom. The result is several pregnancies, a miscarriage and a birth, which pretty well answers the question of what these people do so far from cable TV.
The several sex scenes in Puffball are intercut with vagina-eye views of the goings-on -- white liquid spurting into liquid purple space -- followed by Molly's voodoo palaver, some of it taking place at a giant rock with a hole in it that has something to do with Norse mythology.
To reinforce this idea, Donald Sutherland, a refugee from Roeg's Don't Look Now, pops up in two extremely odd scenes, first to offer Liffey a job at his architecture firm and second to withdraw the offer. "The hardest thing is to keep separate what we do and what we want to be," he says, looking particularly wolfish. "We know nothing. Remember that."
Got it. Roeg further muddies the spiritual waters with the occasional view of the sky as a sparkly bunch of lights. Fetuses appear in the giant puffball mushrooms that litter the landscape, and at one stage, everyone emotes under a puffball moon. The movie is trying for an atmosphere made up of Irish spiritualism and muddy country eroticism, and while there's one scene between Liffey and Mabs's husband (William Houston) that is authentically sexually raucous, it still fails to raise the temperature much.
Roeg is a real film artist whose best work -- which includes Walkabout and The Man Who Fell to Earth -- was elusive and innovative. Puffball, based on a novel by Fay Weldon and adapted by her son Don, is his first film in 11 years, since the TV movie Samson and Delilah, and while you have to salute him for continuing to take the big chance, Puffball seems more like the kind of mushroom they used to take back when Tushingham was a hot leading lady and reality was something that only your parents believed in.
Starring: Kelly Reilly, Miranda Richardson, Rita Tushingham
Directed by: Nicolas Roeg
Written by: Don Weldon
Rating: 18A
Playing at: AMC
OOPSSS JUST A QUOTATION from "moi":
"absurd mess" is the article writer mind ,not the movie ;)xoxoxo.
Avalon/Nessa
Only a very talented director could make this load of dreamy Irish symbolism work. Unfortunately, Nicolas Roeg isn't up to the task,
writes Jay Stone.
Jay Stone, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, October 26, 2007
A new movie by the atmospheric stylist Nicolas Roeg is always an occasion, and so we salute Puffball, a madcap slice of what someone calls "bloody voodoo palaver" that doesn't make sense, exactly, but comes laden with enough dreamy symbolism to fill your Halloween bag.
Puffball is the kind of absurd mess that only a talented director could pull off, and even at that, Roeg is pushing the envelope.
It takes place in Ireland and if you want a quick explanation, it's sort of Straw Dogs meets Rosemary's Baby, except that the devil is replaced by Rita Tushingham, the 1960s British pixie (A Taste of Honey) now grown into an age where she can persuasively play a puckish witch. Unfortunately, there can't be much demand for them.
The witch's name is Molly and she springs into action when lovely Liffey (Kelly Reilly, last seen starkers in Mrs. Henderson Presents) arrives at an isolated cottage in Ireland. Liffey and her American boyfriend (Oscar Pearce) have bought the cottage and are going to renovate it -- she's an architect -- and we are meant to be haunted by several scenes of past goings-on that have something to do with a fire and a baby crying. The fire looks especially computer-generated.
Molly and her family used to own the cottage and still live nearby. Her daughter, Mabs (Miranda Richardson, playing an Irish Earth Mother) has three girls but wants a son, and it appears that Liffey is either threatening that goal or has somehow stolen Mabs's last chance at pregnancy.
In any event, Molly is seen making little straw effigies and cooking up love potions that involve vodka, worms and something taken from a used condom. The result is several pregnancies, a miscarriage and a birth, which pretty well answers the question of what these people do so far from cable TV.
The several sex scenes in Puffball are intercut with vagina-eye views of the goings-on -- white liquid spurting into liquid purple space -- followed by Molly's voodoo palaver, some of it taking place at a giant rock with a hole in it that has something to do with Norse mythology.
To reinforce this idea, Donald Sutherland, a refugee from Roeg's Don't Look Now, pops up in two extremely odd scenes, first to offer Liffey a job at his architecture firm and second to withdraw the offer. "The hardest thing is to keep separate what we do and what we want to be," he says, looking particularly wolfish. "We know nothing. Remember that."
Got it. Roeg further muddies the spiritual waters with the occasional view of the sky as a sparkly bunch of lights. Fetuses appear in the giant puffball mushrooms that litter the landscape, and at one stage, everyone emotes under a puffball moon. The movie is trying for an atmosphere made up of Irish spiritualism and muddy country eroticism, and while there's one scene between Liffey and Mabs's husband (William Houston) that is authentically sexually raucous, it still fails to raise the temperature much.
Roeg is a real film artist whose best work -- which includes Walkabout and The Man Who Fell to Earth -- was elusive and innovative. Puffball, based on a novel by Fay Weldon and adapted by her son Don, is his first film in 11 years, since the TV movie Samson and Delilah, and while you have to salute him for continuing to take the big chance, Puffball seems more like the kind of mushroom they used to take back when Tushingham was a hot leading lady and reality was something that only your parents believed in.
Starring: Kelly Reilly, Miranda Richardson, Rita Tushingham
Directed by: Nicolas Roeg
Written by: Don Weldon
Rating: 18A
Playing at: AMC
OOPSSS JUST A QUOTATION from "moi":
"absurd mess" is the article writer mind ,not the movie ;)xoxoxo.
Avalon/Nessa