(In my mind, I keep saying, 'Murder in the Blue Room".) In part, an homage to Stanley Kubrick, specifically "A Clockwork Orange" and "Lolita". At first, Eloy de la Iglesia's film seems as if it's going to slavishly follow the plot of "Clockwork". But a sudden narrative rupture--which recalls such ruptured narratives as those in, say, "Sullivan's Travels" and "Psycho"--sends it off into near-uncharted territory, although Sue Lyon's Ana recalls the two nutty old women in "Arsenic and Old Lace". The English translation of the Spanish title ("Una Gota de Sangre para Morir Amando"), "A Drop of Blood To Die Loving", gets at her m.o. pretty nicely. Sweet and grim. But mostly grim. Nurse Ana's selective squeamishness functions as both a red herring and psychological insight. In other words, it's a cheat and not a cheat. Her scalpel is a "last caress", as she puts it. In the most breathtaking scene, Ana, all in flowing white, walks past the camera, as the wind blows her bloodstained gown and the attendant dead leaves, and the music lyricizes it all, even, or especially, the leaves. Plus "A Clockwork Orange" on TV, Ana in disguise reading "Lolita" (yes), a "Flash Gordon" auction, and an interesting variation on the amplified-heartbeat strophe. Maybe the finale goes overboard on the anti-clockwork drift, maybe it doesn't. Goodness.![😊]()
statistics: Posted by dcwillis9 — 4:43 AM - Today — Replies 0 — Views 167