Aneesa Wardle
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
mrbc811
My 1st time watching I gained some insight what the purpose of the film,however I prefer watching a film 2 or 3 times before I get real comfortable with what I know about its realness.As the film progressed it reminded me of my days working in mental health and as a Pastor-Chaplain. People and relationships are unique and sometimes strange. This film challenges how, why we do what we do within relationships. How some can be toxic and explosive yet to the person in the relationship all is OK. The film brought this reality forefront in the couples relationships and expanded relationships. Challenged too are how to deal with intimate feelings for someone within a established relationship that has longevity yet the relationship has expanded evolved into a more intimate awaking beyond the original individuals. What would you do if buried hidden feelings exploded but that person was 'off limits'? Be prepared to be shaken in you belief system. As you watch pick a character you feel you relate to Evelyn a manipulator,Adam so needy he loses self to have what he thinks is real, or Jenny and Philip. As you watch you may want to change the character that you have chosen,if so ask why. Also ask would you act the way? That is why this film is perhaps is a reality show more than fiction drama. Perhaps this is what the writer was trying to do, expose the crazy we sometimes get into in relationships.Remember change for you not someone else it will last longer! Chaplain Bubba
royvictoresq
LaBute doesn't like people, either his characters or his audiences. He does like to shock with a tale of cold-hearted sadism, manipulation,& degradation. All four characters & the audience are degraded. You wind up hating her. A sensationally cold calculating feminist monster. But she is not real.A one off deliberately created to shock by the male writer.It is rare for a couple to have repeated sex without affection.It is one of the tricks biology plays on us to ensure the survival of the species.It's why some men fall in love with hookers. The film's notions of the morality of artists are more than somewhat jaundiced. As Damien Hirst says "Life is more important than art".It is incongruent that she is so upset by the fig leaf & the quest for artistic "truth" yet blacks her victims face out while publicly humiliating him. An ugly & dispiriting film. It does make you think, but that is because she is so lacking in any human warmth as to be unbelievable & monstrous.
dranonyme
The premise set in large type on the gallery wall of Evelyn's art school installation,"moralists have no place in an art gallery," seems such a blatant contradiction to her stated intentions (and by extension to Neil LaBute's) that it is hard not to suspect that there is some irony (or self-delusion) intended by its conspicuous signing as the backdrop for LaBute's compelling and open-ended denouement. (The quote is attributed to Han Suyin, pen name of the Chinese-born Elizabeth Comber, whose fascinating career, for those interested, is summarized on Wikipedia at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Suyin). LaBute's thinly veiled allusion to the Fall played out by Adam and Evelyn, noted by many commentators, is perhaps the most fundamental and complex of morality tales, with Adam and Eve each owning their proper share of responsibility for the outcome. (The premonition of Original Sin is played out in the opening scene, when Evelyn, in her hubristic pursuit of "truth" prepares to spray paint a penis on the monumental, fig-leafed Hercules in the art gallery, to which Adam, by walking away, symptomatically acquiesces). It is difficult, as such, to find in this morality play a clear expression of LaBute's misogyny or misandry. Adam and Evelyn are fundamentally co-conspirators, perhaps true to their fallible, gender-determined natures, who in LaBute's canny postmodern twist on Original Sin, are left to contemplate the harsh realities of their hard-won knowledge. If the ostensible purpose of Evelyn's sophomoric MFA project is to rail against "indifference," surely in the metamorphosis of Adam, who hurls the painful, "potty-mouthed" expletive at Evelyn in the final scene ("F**k you, you heartless c**t"), we find that a greater knowledge has been won, as much about his own weakness as about the putative nature of women. Evelyn, for her part, played with complex ambiguity by Rachel Weisz in this final scene, exits conspicuously diminished by her "triumph." She no longer displays the confidence, and barely a shadow of the former diffidence that is her signature throughout the play. She has sacrificed all for her "art," which is laid bare as a dubious conceit regarding art's moral purposes. If her purpose was to expose Adam's lack of a center, she no less exposed her own. The gallery is empty -- none of the large audience that attended her performance (save Adam) is inspired to explore the installation, and she stands pathetically alone and forsaken, it seems, vulnerably clutching herself in the gallery (the body language seems to acknowledge representations of Eve handed down by Masaccio, Michelangelo, and Rodin). Paradoxically, she asks Adam as she makes her exit: "Are you coming?" The presumption is that in spite of the travesty she has vested upon Adam, they are inexorably linked to each other, each the fulfillment in their way of each other's worst nature. Adam demurs, of course (there is much to be said for knowledge, in spite of its costs). In this morality play, LaBute leaves it to us to sort out the consequences of fallible human behavior, and whether or not we find either of the principal players redeemable, he nevertheless leaves no doubt regarding our need to acknowledge the moral deficiencies of our archetypal ancestors. He is fundamentally a moralist in this regard, deeply rooted in the vague hope that art (in this case his, not Evelyn's) may transform us. In the last analysis, this is a humanistic impulse that transcends the superficial misanthropy suggested by the weaknesses of his all-too human characters.
