Bujold was married to this director at the time, and they made several films together. She plays a young woman who returns from Montreal to the rural Quebec community she was raised in because her mother is dying--though unfortunately she's already passed away by the time her daughter gets there. She sticks around ostensibly to care for a spinster uncle, though he doesn't really seem in need of care mentally or physically. She meets a handsome young newcomer (Mark Strange), who at first vaguely frightens her, then doesn't. She fends off some grabby-handed locals. She sees ghosts, or perhaps specters from her own troubled past here. None of this really goes anywhere.
The prospect of seeing Bujold in a "Repulsion"-type thriller is appealing, because she's almost always a compelling actor...but this movie can't decide whether it wants to be "Repulsion," "Straw Dogs," a ghost story, or what. We get hints that her character may be mentally unstable. Yet that turns out to be sort of a red herring, as does really every plot element in the very sketchy script. There's a sexual/violent assault towards the end that comes out of nowhere, and is so darkly staged you can't really tell what's going on anyway.
For a while the atmosphere is intriguing enough, despite the irritating, then-voguish overuse of jump cuts. But after a while it becomes clear the movie can't/won't develop any of its ideas enough to generate suspense, character insight, or any kind of point to the narrative, and that Bujold alone can't carry the whole undercooked enterprise. One always hopes these obscure, often hard-to-find Canadian features will turn out to be gold. But so frequently it's the case--as here--that they are forgotten because they were conceptually muddled and executed without enough boldness of style to compensate. This is just another theoretically interesting misfire that is ultimately rather tedious and unrewarding to watch.
The prospect of seeing Bujold in a "Repulsion"-type thriller is appealing, because she's almost always a compelling actor...but this movie can't decide whether it wants to be "Repulsion," "Straw Dogs," a ghost story, or what. We get hints that her character may be mentally unstable. Yet that turns out to be sort of a red herring, as does really every plot element in the very sketchy script. There's a sexual/violent assault towards the end that comes out of nowhere, and is so darkly staged you can't really tell what's going on anyway.
For a while the atmosphere is intriguing enough, despite the irritating, then-voguish overuse of jump cuts. But after a while it becomes clear the movie can't/won't develop any of its ideas enough to generate suspense, character insight, or any kind of point to the narrative, and that Bujold alone can't carry the whole undercooked enterprise. One always hopes these obscure, often hard-to-find Canadian features will turn out to be gold. But so frequently it's the case--as here--that they are forgotten because they were conceptually muddled and executed without enough boldness of style to compensate. This is just another theoretically interesting misfire that is ultimately rather tedious and unrewarding to watch.