Friday, 25 February 2011

Sea of Love
(1989)

RATING:80%
FORMAT:DVD



Clever and rather unusual picture about loneliness that conveys its message through a serial killer plot.

Here the loneliness of big city life is presented as a very threat to ones life as lonely married men answer contact advertisements and wind-up getting murdered for their troubles.

Once you realize that this is a metaphor for Western cultural anomie, the strangeness of the premiss wears off and a world of dysfunctional sexual-relationships opens up: Some sad, some ridiculous and many empathetic.

The film is a little lazy in not fully exploring its own issues as it tries to keep the murder plot simmering while slowly revealing the true theme of the drama: Love in a modern, materialistic and emotionally-repressed culture. Yet it hits a few raw nerves as we watch the sometimes crazy and illegal things people do to feel some kind of emotional connection with others.

As a serial-killer movie, this is somewhat implausible, but as a love story, it closely follows the ups and downs in sexual relationships in a modern, alienated culture.

The lovely Ellen BARKIN and the gifted Al PACINO do very well with their under-written roles in both conveying a strong sense of having been hurt by lovers in the past. And there is a palpable sexual chemistry between the two in this love story with a difference: A sex-comedy with a more serious edge than So I Married an Axe Murderer.


Copyright © 2011 Frank TALKER. Permission granted to reproduce and distribute it in any format; provided that mention of the author’s Weblog (http://franktalker5.blogspot.com/) is included: E-mail notification requested. All other rights reserved.

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No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



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The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



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