An average movie

To be honest, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by David Mackenzie and since it was available on Netflix, I thought I might as well check it out. Well, even though this story did have some potential, I’m afraid the damned thing still turned out to be rather half-baked after all. The first issue was that Stella and Edgar fell completely in love after seeing each other for maybe 5 mins. Seriously, their love affair started already after 10 mins of running time and it was rather unconvincing how they seemed to have sex on a daily basis in broad daylight with probably plenty of people around. For Edgar, since he was some unhinged sex starved mental patient, it wasn’t so surprising that he would go for it. However, for Stella, they never managed to show or explain convincingly why some average upper-class wife would get involved in such a doomed love affair with obviously very little prospects. Another issue was that, except for having some really hot sex, I thought that Stella and Edgar were both actually rather bland after all. Indeed, I didn’t care much about this couple and it was also linked to the fact that, even though Natasha Richardson and Marton Csokas were both physically appealing, they both rather failed to show the inner struggle that obviously both their characters were experiencing. What was also bewildering was Ian McKellen’s character in all this. Maybe he was infatuated with Edgar, maybe he was infatuated with Stella, maybe with both. I mean, it was rather ridiculous how he managed to get back Edgar to the same asylum, to get Stella institutionalized again in the very same asylum where she met Edgar and were he was once again, and that he managed to convince her to marry him on top of all that. It was definitely a lot to swallow, that’s for sure. The tragic ending was interesting though and displayed that there was probably a decent story hidden there somewhere. Anyway, to conclude, in spite of its flaws, it was nice to see to Natasha Richardson who was too young when she passed away but there is no doubt that the damned thing didn’t really work though.