Strangers of Patience (2018) Here's one that fulfills one of our prime missions when we started this blog.....
......to seek out the weirdest, strangest, most off beat obscure movies the world has never heard of. Or if anyone did hear of them, they'd long forgotten the movies existed.....
And oh boy, did we find one, stumbling upon it by pure accident as we randomly surfed through the 1000's of films available on the free streaming site Tubi.
This one came out of Russia, a fascinating stab at a twisted genre that American and European filmmakers dabble in from time to time......
We speak of the 'young girl finds herself a prisoner of a man so obsessed with her, he'll never let her go' genre.
The grandaddy of these films was 'The Collector', director William Wyler's 1965 adaptation of the John Fowles' bestselling novel. Terence Stamp played the psychotic, lovelorn geek who captures a beautiful art student (Samantha Eggar).
Over the years, subsequent 'captive girl' films would pop up, but unlike the high profile pedigree of 'The Collector', these films mostly fell into sleazy exploitation categories. To put it simply....Grindhouse Bondage.
(Sensing an audience secretly hungry for this genre, the Lifetime Channel began pumping out sanitized 'ripped from the headlines' versions, drawing on true stories of teen girls abducted by their teachers, neighbors, or just garden variety generic perverts)
'Strangers of Patience', befitting its country of origin, maintains a slow steady build up of fear and loathing. Unlike cruder takes on this genre, the film purports to hold high aspirations.....an examination of the nature of art and artists.....asking, does the artist's quest for a perfect expression of his talent justify his madness?
But for those who come strictly for the sleaze, the film allows them to revel in the escalating terror and humiliation of an innocent girl victim....
Middle aged artist-photographer Andrey (Konstantin Lavronenko) is desperate for new inspiration. He finds it when he lays eyes on young Marina (Maja Szopa), a deaf mute actress who performs with a mime company.
Andrey invites the sweet trusting Marina for a photo session at his sprawling country estate that serves as his studio....
Anybody want to take a wild guess as to what happens next?
Once Andrey rips his mask of normality off, the film's second half becomes slow torture for both Marina and us, the audience who's become terribly fearful for her safety and sanity.
The film serves as a spectacular introduction to young beautiful actress Szopa, who's forced to transition from a fawn caught in the headlights to a an increasingly desperate plotter of daring escapes. She's quite an amazing find and we can only hope that casting agents from every corner of the globe take notice of her.
(Hey, you Amazon guys looking for the next Bond girl....we found her......)
And let's talk about that ending.....
If you've sat through any number of these 'captive girl vs. psycho captor' films, you know the options by now for their grand finales.This holds true for both the fictional stories and the true life experiences.
Different movies have made different choices and there's no guarantee that anyone's going to go along with how the filmmakers decide their characters fates.
We're not particularly on board with the 'Strangers of Patience' close-out, but we know we are crazy for Maja Szopa, now anointed as BQ's New Favorite Actress, someone for whom we'd gladly sit still for a 3 hour film of her reading Ikea furniture instructions.
It's a disturbing, compelling and off-the-beaten-path effort coming out of Russian cinema, with more in common with its ancestor, the artful "The Collector" than any of the lower rung efforts in this peculiar sub-genre.
And a most definite star is born in the astonishing, versitile Ms. Szopa. We can only hope Maja moves to the West for film opportunities....if Putin sees it, he'll trap her in his KGB fun room and she'll never be heard from again.........(we'd lose the will to live should that happen....)
3 & 1/2 stars (***1/2)
No comments:
Post a Comment