Post by avalon on Nov 12, 2007 19:48:30 GMT 9.5
Interesting... 
Movie Review: Puffball
Roeg cacks up this awful 'Puffball'
By LIZ BRAUN - Sun Media
based on a Fay Weldon novel, populated by a decent cast and directed by Nic Roeg -- all good things -- the film is a disjointed mess about wild untrammeled nature, child-bearing and the wacky Irish.
The really, really, really bad news is that Roeg seems to have lost his touch with sex scenes.
Puffball makes no sense and is riddled with bizarre visuals.
It stars Kelly Reilly as Liffey, an architect who is rebuilding a cottage in Ireland.
Early on in the film, the camera lingers on a giant puffball lying on the ground in the countryside.
The round white fungus suddenly glows and the image of a fetus throbs from within.
Say what?
It's ... a pregnant mushroom?
A symbol?
A foreshadowing of birthy things to come?
Maybe a cooking show?
Thereafter, the story careers around through sex, magic potions, voodoo dolls and flashbacks to a little dead boy.
Puffball, though not a ghost story, is full of supernatural hocus-pocus and putrid dialogue.
And did we mention the bad sex scenes?
Liffey discovers she's pregnant (following an awkward, outdoor sex scene).
She doesn't want the child.
She has a miscarriage, potentially a direct result of overacting.
Meanwhile, her eccentric rural neighbour (Miranda Richardson) wants a child, but can't conceive.
The neighbour's elderly mom (Rita Tushingham) is also hoping another baby will come into the family to make up for the baby boy she lost many years before.
Haunting flashback!
The neighbour's husband goes over to Liffey's house, perhaps hoping for a clunky and embarrassing sex scene.
Bingo!
Their passion is laced with shots of sperm zooming upward. Say what?
Liffey is pregnant again!
For some reason, and it's probably his longstanding friendship with Nic Roeg, Donald Sutherland comes out to the country to visit Liffey and spout philosophy.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. The plot thickens.
The baby Liffey is carrying turns out to be one she wants to keep.
There is witchy speculation that she has somehow 'stolen' a baby meant for her neighbour to bear.
Liffey is hexed.
She has terrible dreams about people stabbing her belly or switching her child for one that is deformed, not that any of this can prevent another deeply self-conscious sex scene.
Eventually, the cabin is finished, the baby is born, the neighbour has her own resolution to events, the neighbour's daughter plays piano and Liffey and her fiance move away to live elsewhere and perhaps have some clunky sex.
The end.
Not a moment too soon.
(This film is rated 18-A)
Movie Review: Puffball
Roeg cacks up this awful 'Puffball'
By LIZ BRAUN - Sun Media
based on a Fay Weldon novel, populated by a decent cast and directed by Nic Roeg -- all good things -- the film is a disjointed mess about wild untrammeled nature, child-bearing and the wacky Irish.
The really, really, really bad news is that Roeg seems to have lost his touch with sex scenes.
Puffball makes no sense and is riddled with bizarre visuals.
It stars Kelly Reilly as Liffey, an architect who is rebuilding a cottage in Ireland.
Early on in the film, the camera lingers on a giant puffball lying on the ground in the countryside.
The round white fungus suddenly glows and the image of a fetus throbs from within.
Say what?
It's ... a pregnant mushroom?
A symbol?
A foreshadowing of birthy things to come?
Maybe a cooking show?
Thereafter, the story careers around through sex, magic potions, voodoo dolls and flashbacks to a little dead boy.
Puffball, though not a ghost story, is full of supernatural hocus-pocus and putrid dialogue.
And did we mention the bad sex scenes?
Liffey discovers she's pregnant (following an awkward, outdoor sex scene).
She doesn't want the child.
She has a miscarriage, potentially a direct result of overacting.
Meanwhile, her eccentric rural neighbour (Miranda Richardson) wants a child, but can't conceive.
The neighbour's elderly mom (Rita Tushingham) is also hoping another baby will come into the family to make up for the baby boy she lost many years before.
Haunting flashback!
The neighbour's husband goes over to Liffey's house, perhaps hoping for a clunky and embarrassing sex scene.
Bingo!
Their passion is laced with shots of sperm zooming upward. Say what?
Liffey is pregnant again!
For some reason, and it's probably his longstanding friendship with Nic Roeg, Donald Sutherland comes out to the country to visit Liffey and spout philosophy.
Anyway, it doesn't matter. The plot thickens.
The baby Liffey is carrying turns out to be one she wants to keep.
There is witchy speculation that she has somehow 'stolen' a baby meant for her neighbour to bear.
Liffey is hexed.
She has terrible dreams about people stabbing her belly or switching her child for one that is deformed, not that any of this can prevent another deeply self-conscious sex scene.
Eventually, the cabin is finished, the baby is born, the neighbour has her own resolution to events, the neighbour's daughter plays piano and Liffey and her fiance move away to live elsewhere and perhaps have some clunky sex.
The end.
Not a moment too soon.
(This film is rated 18-A)
