Danish filmmaker Kristian Levring directs the Dogme 95-inspired period drama The Intended, co-written by leading lady Janet McTeer. Shot with digital video, the film takes place in the Malaysia jungle during the 1920s. Fortysomething British woman Sarah (McTeer) travels with her younger fiancé, Hamish Winslow (JJ Feild), to a small community near Borneo. Hamish has been hired to survey the land and map a road for a trading post run by a deeply dysfunctional family. The local ruler is tough
matriarch Mrs. Jones (Brenda Fricker), who dominates her son William (Tony Maudsley) and nephew Norton (Philip Jackson). When a climate change causes them to become even more isolated, the family tension takes a dark turn. Also starring Olympia Dukakis. The Intended premiered at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
We begin hoping the ghost of Tennessee Williams will jump out of the bush and inform these characters that it takes more than wounded people with dark secrets, annoying insects and dripping moisture to make something of a tale like this.
Few actresses can deliver intensity like McTeer, and it's that distinctive, all-purpose stare coupled with her sheer physicality that once again dominates the story.
The pace is stultifying, and even though the ensemble looks realistically stinky and sweaty, the stately progression of events mirrors far too well the torpor of the tropics.
Levring and an excellent cast are lost in the shadow of Conrad and other masters, and their sex-money theme requires a genius of hopelessness like Erich von Stroheim.
Although phenomenally well-acted, the film's leisurely pace ultimately makes it feel as oppressive as the tropical heat and humidity that gradually turn the characters into slow-moving heaps of damp, dirty rags.
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