uber-indie: Deadly Obsessions

[pryor15]

starring: Nick Capous, Irene Glezos, Karen Stanion, and Michelle Verhoeven
cinematography by: Karl Bauer
written and directed by: Karl Bauer
$50,000/101 min/Philadelphia, PA

Karl Bauer's Deadly Obsessions (2003) is a semi-erotic thriller in which people try to deal with their failed marriages by finding love elsewhere, whether it's in another person or money or both. Marty (Nick Capous) and Rebecca (Irene Glezos) are in a loveless marriage, both of them cheating on each other without really bothering to hide it from the other. Marty has Monica (Michelle Verhoeven), and we can probably assume there are others. Rebecca has her best friend, Lisa (Karen Stanion), a bi-sexual participant in an equally loveless marriage who's teaching Rebecca how to be a proper lesbian while attempting to seduce Marty. Throw in a murder plot, and you've got the makings of some sexy escapist cinema. Fun for all ages, as they say.

Only, it isn't nearly sexy enough or escapist enough or even campy enough to really succeed in any one direction. The performances aren't over-the-top enough to justify the type of guilty pleasure you'd find in a telenova--everyone's very serious about what's going on, but not in a histrionic sort of way. The plot isn't big enough to be escapist. Sure, there's murder and lesbians and deception, but it's not a combination we haven't seen before and none of it's shocking. The lesbian twist is pretty apparent early in the film, so it comes as no surprise. But, the film seems to think of it as something of a trump card (albeit a preliminary one), so it spends all this time setting up a grand reveal and all the audience can say is "well, yeah, of course they are." It doesn't help that the first lesbian scene breaks the 180 degree rule maybe 15 times. That's not the type of thing that instills confidence in your audience.

Nothing the film does, plot-wise, is bold enough to get our attention. At no point does it really go for broke and risk being a big disaster. It plays close to the vest, unwilling to take a real chance. And there isn't enough talent on display (not to say the people involved don't possess that talent, it just isn't on the screen) for Deadly Obsessions to work as a middle-of-the-road thriller. Ergo, it ends up being kind of dull.

Which brings us to the sex. These characters spend a great deal of time having sex. The script has lots of sex. The film does not. What we get more often than not is a fade to black, or a pan to the window. It feels like the sex has been edited out of the film by someone other than the director, like a TV edit. Actually, the entire time I'm watching Deadly Obsessions I can't shake the feeling that what I'm watching is one of those 80's TV movies they show on Saturday afternoon when there's no college basketball on. For most of the film I actually thought that's what Bauer was going for, I thought he'd made an interesting genre choice, but the more I watched, the more I thought it couldn't be possible. Too much of it was modern, even if they did seem to be wearing clothes that had a distinct 80's look. Maybe it's the fact that the film is shot on 16mm.

One more note. The script feels like an early draft. Much of the dialogue is stilted and cliche, almost a script by numbers. There's very little subtext, and what little we do have is played so that it's impossible to miss (which kind of defeats the purpose of subtext). But more importantly, there's a long exposition scene between Marty and Lisa that just destroys any and all momentum the film had. The scene is at least 10 minutes long--maybe longer--but it feels like 45 minutes and after a while you don't even care what they're saying. You just want the scene to end. That's when my roommate decided he'd rather be doing something else.

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But hey, I could be wrong. Check out Deadly Obsessions for yourself at the official homepage. You can purchase the film for $14.99 on FilmBaby.com. You can read the director's blog here.

Got a film you'd like to submit for the uber-indie project? Go here for details.

[Subfallen]

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It doesn't help that the first lesbian scene breaks the 180 degree rule maybe 15 times.

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What is the "180 degree rule?"

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Only, it isn't nearly sexy enough or escapist enough or even campy enough to really succeed in any one direction.

[/ QUOTE ]

I like this insight very much. So often filmmakers seem to forget the "principle of limitation, the sole saving principle in the world." I remember Mike Myers describing how the milieu of the Austin Powers films is almost entirely inspired by his own personality quirks. The world inside Mike Myer's head may seem like a rather limited domain to make a movie about, but because it's a domain so feverishly real and funny to him, we can all revel in the intensity and unfamiliarity of our encounter with it.

[ QUOTE ]

Nothing the film does, plot-wise, is bold enough to get our attention. At no point does it really go for broke and risk being a big disaster. It plays close to the vest, unwilling to take a real chance.

[/ QUOTE ]

This I'm less fond of. IMO, a critic accusing a plot of failing to "take chances" is rather like a wine connoisseur accusing a wine of failing to "taste good." Certainly the wine should please the palate, and certainly a script must take chances. But we turn to experts to tell us why the wine doesn't taste good, and how the script failed to take a chance. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Anyways, keep 'em coming! Always a good read.

[samsdmf]

[ QUOTE ]
It doesn't help that the first lesbian scene breaks the 180 degree rule maybe 15 times.

[/ QUOTE ]

What is the "180 degree rule?"



[/ QUOTE ]

The 180 degree rule is more often (well where I was taught) known as the 'Line of Action'. Its a editing technique used to keep continuity in scenes- it says that two characters should always be on the same side of each other. For example Person A and B are talking in a stadium; if the camera is facing north Person A is on the left and B on the right, if the camera moves more than 180 degrees around the stadium (past facing either the east or south end) Person A will switch to the right in the scene, killing continuity.
It can be used effectively to give the confusing WTF is going on feeling to a scene, if you watch work by Kubrick or Ozu they will break the rule to give a sense of disorientation.

[Blarg]

Also many European filmmakers disregard this rule entirely. The 180 degree rule is a stylistic counterpart of the very American "principle of narrative economy," that keeps everything as clear and direct as possible. It's one of the things that can make our movies go down so smoothly -- the camera is always right where you want and expect it to be, and you never have to guess or be disoriented.

Some others either don't give a damn, or are sloppy, and some even do it for stylistic reasons. It can be surprising both how often this very good rule is ignored, as well as how a film sequence can get along fine and sometimes not even be very jarring, anyway. Once you expect the 180 degree rule to be inviolate, and learn to value it, it can suddenly leap out at you when it's disregarded.

[pryor15]

i should point out that there are times where you can disregard the rule (usually because you are going for something specific) and there are time when you clearly can't (like when you don't know what the hell you're doing). this was one of the latter

[Subfallen]

Thx guys, that's very intuitive when explained. I think it would be cool to know more such rules. Is there a "Film for Dummies" book or something?

[Dominic]

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i should point out that there are times where you can disregard the rule (usually because you are going for something specific) and there are time when you clearly can't (like when you don't know what the hell you're doing). this was one of the latter

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an example of when you can't is when two people are facing one another, having a conversation and you cut back and forth between one person and the other. This is known as their "eyeline."

first you see person A looking to the left of the camera

--------->

next you have person B looking to the right of the camera

<---------

what this does is give the impression they are talking to one another. However, if both people were looking in the same direction:

-------------->
-------------->

they will give the impression that they aren't looking at each other, rather, they are both looking off in the same direction. It's disorienting.

[pryor15]

dom,

that's almost exactly what it was.

2 people on a couch, facing each other.

camera 1 in front of the couch, filming character A
camera 2 behind the couch, filming character B

so basically every time there was a cut (and it was a long scene with lots of cuts between just 2 shots), it looked like they had switched places on the couch

[samsdmf]

The problem with disregarding the rule is that you need to REALLY understand it to make breakign it work. A lot of the 'maverick' euro indy directors seem to break the rule for the sake of it or, as previously mentioned because of the complete lack of understanding of it, this is why almsot all the time it just looks clumsy and amateurish.
I dont want to completly derail this thread with Filmy technique talk but its perhaps a good idea for a new thread.