Was excited about this Tarantino pick. Stylish enough, good use of color and shadows; and the beginning has sympathy for the wife (Maribel Martin, beautiful and sexy with only mid-level cheek bones ) and a queasy fear about the husband, a macho aristocrat with a Bluebeard-like psychology. Around the middle, the
movie's POV coldly drifts away from both newlyweds, as though whoever bleeds is not important, only that the spilled blood is fate. Finally, the movie loses sympathy with the woman's powerlessness in the marriage, treats female solidarity as some kind of mass psychosis, and with Polanski-like devil's humor, leaves us a thrill ending that is also a metaphysical explanation for perennial misogyny against woman. It's not an artistically brave conclusion; not creative or nuanced, it's the hack's way out.
July 10, 2010
