| RATING: | 60% |
| FORMAT: | DVD |
Nothing-special wish-fulfillment fantasy along Hollywood lines; albeit one featuring naturalistic performances.
The characterization is rather superficial and the plot contrived. The essence of this mystery is easy to guess pretty much from the outset; leaving the audience with little to do but wait and see if their dramaturgical guesses are correct.
Revenge is an issue here handled with all the common sense one has come to expect from a Western culture mired in its own militarism and the desire for violence-against-others-without-consequences. We are invited to empathize with someone who makes emotional decisions without consequential reflection while - absurdly - her choices work out perfectly.
The fact that sexually-dysfunctional Christian families are common is never questioned nor explored, dramatically. So we are presented with sexual violence as entertainment without ever really understanding the affects this has on the central characters. And without these affects, there is no real drama - despite the visual realism.
Films like this exist solely within the confines of an alternate reality that can only be explained with reference to a declining European culture; fantasizing about its lost world-power status. The anti-sexism and anti-racism of the plot is simply a decoration to the narrative and not an essential part of it: A well-made paean to the self-obsessive, narcissistic solipsism of a nihilistic culture - with little in the way of subtlety or insight to offer its jaded audience.
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