A professional couple living in Bel-Air discover a lemming trapped in the S-bend of their kitchen sink. From this point on, the apparent stability of their relationship is increasingly undermined. Why ? We don't know. But the movie is successful to the extent that you don't feel as though you need to know.
It is a Lynchian movie in that it seems to follow it's own internal logic rather than a plot. There is also the device of locating the dark and sinister in mainly bright daylight and bland residential surroundings with rather bland professional folks. This works really well. Also there is the sense of identity mix-up between the two female characters as there was in 'Lost Highway'.
However, what it put me in mind of more than anything was another contemporary movie set in France - Haneke's Cache (Hidden) which seems to explore middle-class professional insecurities in surprising ways. (Is this the kind of movie Bunuel would make if he was of these times and not last century ?) And as with Haneke's movie, the director has the courage to dwell on rather static scenes bordering on the boring and then punctuated with shocks. This is how tension is built up throughout and it works superbly aided by evocative sound design (another Lynch trait).
As for the acting, the 'model couple' are suitably innocuous and emotionally semi-detached in demeanour whilst Charlotte Rampling's character is a small masterpiece of menace and malintent. One of the most disturbing and distressed characters I have seen.
My own take on it was that the older couple were a manifestation of the unarticulated fears of the younger couple - of how they might turn out by pursuing this kind of aspirational professional lifestyle. The lemming,far from being a Scandinavian rat, is actually a common or garden red herring (or McGuffin). Really, the movie represents contemporary anxieties about class, professionalism and identity.
It is an intriguing and effective movie for the most part but a bit overlong. And the use of the voice-over ending seemed perfunctory and was at odds with the tone of everything that had gone before. All the ending really seemed to me to say was 'it was all just a dream/imagining/and then he woke up'. There are other moments like that throughout, but up until the end it is all open to question. The last thing I want is for these questions to be answered.
It is a Lynchian movie in that it seems to follow it's own internal logic rather than a plot. There is also the device of locating the dark and sinister in mainly bright daylight and bland residential surroundings with rather bland professional folks. This works really well. Also there is the sense of identity mix-up between the two female characters as there was in 'Lost Highway'.
However, what it put me in mind of more than anything was another contemporary movie set in France - Haneke's Cache (Hidden) which seems to explore middle-class professional insecurities in surprising ways. (Is this the kind of movie Bunuel would make if he was of these times and not last century ?) And as with Haneke's movie, the director has the courage to dwell on rather static scenes bordering on the boring and then punctuated with shocks. This is how tension is built up throughout and it works superbly aided by evocative sound design (another Lynch trait).
As for the acting, the 'model couple' are suitably innocuous and emotionally semi-detached in demeanour whilst Charlotte Rampling's character is a small masterpiece of menace and malintent. One of the most disturbing and distressed characters I have seen.
My own take on it was that the older couple were a manifestation of the unarticulated fears of the younger couple - of how they might turn out by pursuing this kind of aspirational professional lifestyle. The lemming,far from being a Scandinavian rat, is actually a common or garden red herring (or McGuffin). Really, the movie represents contemporary anxieties about class, professionalism and identity.
It is an intriguing and effective movie for the most part but a bit overlong. And the use of the voice-over ending seemed perfunctory and was at odds with the tone of everything that had gone before. All the ending really seemed to me to say was 'it was all just a dream/imagining/and then he woke up'. There are other moments like that throughout, but up until the end it is all open to question. The last thing I want is for these questions to be answered.