Love, Life and Makeup Magazine Issue 2 | Page 36

Eoin is our resident Film/TV buff if you would like to ask him any questions or request a review please email [email protected] with the subject line "Reel Time Reviews".

The touch points stop being mainstream crime dramas and instead evoke “Basic Instinct”, “Jade”, “The Last Seduction” and “The Colour of Night”. There are even hints at “Disclosure” in the way sexual politics and in particular the assumptions people have along gender lines about sexual victims and villains can be severely twisted if someone is terrible enough to use them.

Having seen Rosumund Pike in a few films now and been mostly underwhelmed it was great to see her throw herself so fully into a role and give the audience one of the most terrifying sociopaths that the screen has seen in a long time. Ben Affleck is very good as a man trapped in an increasingly Kafkaesque nightmare. Tyler Perry is great as Tanner Bolt, a man convinced of his mastery and looking for another challenge to prove it. For anyone familiar with the Tyler Perry of the Medea movies, this is not him, like everything in this film; it’s so far away from your preconceptions that it’s a thrill to watch.

The way the gender roles play out may cause concern for some people but these types of movies have always traded in archetypes. The two main characters fall into the offish, philandering idiot and the “Hell hath no Fury” style woman. In this case it’s left for the supporting charters to balance out the equations and Gillian Flynn has done a great job of giving all concerned great moments to flesh out the world.

The film is also quite funny in a very dark way. The characters are witty and they relieve tension with just the right amount of sarcasm and funny dialogue. The trailers won’t spotlight this but there were several real big laughs in the cinema I was in. The darker the comment or situation, the bigger the laugh.

That said; there is one scene late in the move that was so heart-stoppingly grotesque and reminded me of the reveal of Lavinia in Julie Taymor’s “Titus”, although it

Eoin(@e_boyler)

it ups the ante on that image so far that it seems almost like a parody. It ranks as one of the more disturbing images I’ve seen this year and sets itself as an amazing vicious flourish in what, till then had been a very controlled movie.

The last thing to mention is the music in the movie. For the third film in a row Fincher is working with Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross. Ross commented in an interview that he got the idea for the tone of the soundtrack while having a massage. He said he was struck by the way the music that was supposed to be soothing could occasionally tip over into ominous or frightening and felt that this was the right feel for the film. The Music is very unobtrusive for the most part and acts to give the flashback a dreamlike quality. While in the present the music is nice and relaxing but with distorted feedback and high pitched pings coming in occasionally to startle the viewer. It’s amazing how these little off-kilter noises manage to imbue a scene with tension or fear. Alas, while I could write much more on this beautifully twisted dark requiem for a relationship, any more detail would spoil that

gloriously unhinged third act and the caustic punchline of an ending. Go See it, and let me know what you think?