Here are Michael D. Reid's latest Victoria Film Festival reviews. The 10-day cinematic showcase wraps up Sunday.
HOUSE OF PLEASURES
Where: Empire Capitol 6
When: Today, 2 p.m.
Rating: 1 1/2
It's unquestionably artful and ravishingly photographed, but that's the best that can honestly be said about Bertrand Bonello's wearisome, indulgent and seemingly endless portrait of a Parisian brothel's final days at the end of the 19th century. Pleasures are few and far between in this languid snore that, despite a cast dominated by beautiful women, abundant nudity and simulated, at times kinky soft-focus sex, couldn't be less arousing. Bonello takes his time - and wastes ours, frankly - to fashion an impressionistic exercise that in place of narrative substance emphasizes art direction and long, lingering shots of prostitutes sipping champagne, smoking opium and stroking the egos and bodies of their contemptuous clients. It's so evocative you can practically feel the silk and smell the perfume, semen and sweat that the leering camerawork captures the ladies washing off their bodies. And while there are references to the risks of sexual disease, debts incurred by this sisterhood of sluts and boredom that proves infectious, there's not much narrative meat on the bones of Bonello's admittedly eye-catching tale of sexual slavery. Gratuitous close-ups, repeated in slow motion, of a blood-spurting courtesan dubbed the Woman Who Laughs being so facially disfigured by a sadistic, knife-wielding slasher that she resembles the Joker were meant to create the impression Bonello is Bunuellike, perhaps? Please. All it does is demonstrate how bereft of originality or inspiration this film is, and the lengths to which a filmmaker will go to satisfy his ego.
DONOVAN'S ECHO
Where: Empire Capitol 6
When: Tonight, 9: 15
Rating: 2 1/2
B.C. director Jim Cliffe, who co-wrote with Melodie Krieger, achieves mixed results as he attempts to put a fresh spin on familiar material with this intriguing but annoyingly slow-paced paranormal thriller about an alcoholic retired physicist who returns to his hometown 30 years after the tragic death of his wife and daughter. Films from Nicholas Roeg's classic 1973 suspenser Don't Look Now to The Gift spring to mind as Donovan, portrayed with quiet intensity by Danny Glover, is plagued by premonitions of a local family's impending tragedy. As this kind, well-intentioned math whiz obsessively tries to warn a mother (Sonja Bennett) and her daughter (Natasha Calis) with visual clues that coincide with his own family's dark past, he is increasingly regarded as a delusional old drunk, even by his sympathetic but exasperated brother-inlaw, a local police officer (Bruce Greenwood). While the film's sluggish pacing gradually improves and Glover engages us with his performance as the mournful and misguided title character, the plot details don't amount to enough to prevent us from feeling cheated by the time it's over. Although not a film to be dismissed, it just doesn't deliver the mind-blowing payoff you might have hoped for.