The cast and creative team endow this film with the promise of greatness. And indeed, for the first 15 minutes or so, the crisp cinematography, coupled with Rush's authoritative characterization, keep this promise firmly viable. In the first instance we have an endearingly dour, (refreshingly heterosexual) dandy of an art and antiques dealer, who likes to dabble in a little illicit personal procurement every now and then.
So far so plausible. We'll even forgive that they called him Virgil.
His professional services are enlisted by an elusive 20-something year-old agoraphobe. She consents only to talk with him through a wall, while he systematically itemizes the vast array of antiques housed within her parents' decaying villa (in which she lives).
Okay.
But it's all downhill from there, in a series of clichés, 'not-quite' plot devices, and self-indulgent direction.
Virgil's trusted mechanician and confidant, Robert, for example, is an impossible combination of youth and exhaustive expertise, rendered even more irritating by his British soap-opera cad demeanor. The conversation between him and Virgil in which the latter explicates the significance of a particular 18th Century inventor, is a cringe-worthy exercise in obtuse Hollywoodised scripting.
Film, as a storytelling medium, has no excuse to lug theatrical economy around with it when trying to relay such information. That's just lazy direction and screen writing. Nor should it require such overt acts as Virgil accidentally dropping his phone while spying-up Miss Agoraphobia from behind a (conveniently erotic, as if we were dumb enough to require further reminding of the dynamics incurred when a lonely old man enters into fellowship with some young feminine eye candy) marble statue at the end of the room. It's the stuff of chick flicks.
While the twists and half-turns (because they weren't entirely unpredictable) at the end of the film make for interesting, potentially thrilling cinema-fodder, the pay-offs ultimately suffer from clunky set-up. Anomalies such as Claire - the girl-genius with a freakish propensity for remembering details, or the all-too-convincingly-played groundsman Lambert, beg more questions than they answer.
And not in a good way; rather, in a way that alludes to a director who, like Virgil, was rather too concerned with aesthetics, at the expense of something deeper and more gratifying.
Unless, of course, you get a kick out of characters called Virgil Oldham transpiring to *actually* be a Virginal Old Man. Then you'll likely consider this film an intellectual masterpiece.
So far so plausible. We'll even forgive that they called him Virgil.
His professional services are enlisted by an elusive 20-something year-old agoraphobe. She consents only to talk with him through a wall, while he systematically itemizes the vast array of antiques housed within her parents' decaying villa (in which she lives).
Okay.
But it's all downhill from there, in a series of clichés, 'not-quite' plot devices, and self-indulgent direction.
Virgil's trusted mechanician and confidant, Robert, for example, is an impossible combination of youth and exhaustive expertise, rendered even more irritating by his British soap-opera cad demeanor. The conversation between him and Virgil in which the latter explicates the significance of a particular 18th Century inventor, is a cringe-worthy exercise in obtuse Hollywoodised scripting.
Film, as a storytelling medium, has no excuse to lug theatrical economy around with it when trying to relay such information. That's just lazy direction and screen writing. Nor should it require such overt acts as Virgil accidentally dropping his phone while spying-up Miss Agoraphobia from behind a (conveniently erotic, as if we were dumb enough to require further reminding of the dynamics incurred when a lonely old man enters into fellowship with some young feminine eye candy) marble statue at the end of the room. It's the stuff of chick flicks.
While the twists and half-turns (because they weren't entirely unpredictable) at the end of the film make for interesting, potentially thrilling cinema-fodder, the pay-offs ultimately suffer from clunky set-up. Anomalies such as Claire - the girl-genius with a freakish propensity for remembering details, or the all-too-convincingly-played groundsman Lambert, beg more questions than they answer.
And not in a good way; rather, in a way that alludes to a director who, like Virgil, was rather too concerned with aesthetics, at the expense of something deeper and more gratifying.
Unless, of course, you get a kick out of characters called Virgil Oldham transpiring to *actually* be a Virginal Old Man. Then you'll likely consider this film an intellectual masterpiece.