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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