Obsession Is Irons (Damage [1993] (DVD))

Member Name: wampyrii

Product:	Damage [1993] (DVD)
Date:	04/05/02 (224 review reads)
Rating:

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Louis Malle's movie adaptation of Josephine Hart's novel about obsession and desire is a worthy way to spend an evening but feels that it has set up something grand and then offered you nothing but average for your money. So many avenues are left unexplored or under-developed that you can't help but feel that you have been given a fruitcake without the fruit. Malle opens up a number of intriguing psychological avenues and then doesn't seem to know how to explore any of them other than that of the central theme which is at best this is disappointing, at worse deeply frustrating, but its still relatively entertaining stuff.

The central plot revolves around the characters of politician Dr. Stephen Fleming(Jeremy Irons) and his son's girlfriend Anna Barton(Juliette Binochet) who become involved in a steamy affair shortly after meeting for the first time. The first long lingering stare they exchange upon meeting sets you up for the steamy bedroom romps which are to follow before the relationship between Anna and Stephen's son Martyn(Rupert Graves) becomes more serious and it appears that Stephen must give her up. He can't handle that and his desire for her turns into obsession as he pushes the limits to try to get her to be with him thrusting all propriety and sense of family responsibility to the wayside in the process.

Its entertaining stuff, but its deeply flawed entertaining stuff at that. The central premise of the passionate affair between Stephen and Anna is poorly set up with a less than smouldering lingering stare near the beginning seemingly enough to precipitate bedroom romps aplenty. Stephen's then obsession with Anna is equally less then plausible when you consider for a moment that Juliette Binochet, nice girl that she is, is hardly the kind of woman who is about to enflame your deepest, darkest passions. Admittedly Stephen hasn't been getting very many midnight rumba sessions with his frigid wife Mirand
a Richardson, but even so there would surely be few who would risk everything for a Juliette Binochet???Each to their own, I suppose, but it didn?t ring true to me anyway. Equally, you would have to say that the movie's attempts at steamy sex scenes are hardly pulled off very well, more a frantic fumble than eroticism if you ask me...

That said, the actors on display here are excellent and Jeremy Irons portrayal as a man obsessed is riveting stuff. You can't say that his stiff, rigid persona is particularly well suited to the bedroom shennanigins but for a perfect portrayal of a man driven almost insane with lust you cant get a better actor than him. Juliette Binochet is equally good although decidedly under-utilised as is Miranda Richardson who always turns in a superb performance but is rarely given the chance to do so. There is a lot to keep your attention here, but not as much as there should have been. I would have liked to have seen more of the relationship between Stephen and his young daughter and everything else he is risking in the pursuit of animal passion for the movie to have been more effective rather than the single-minded focus upon the movie's central theme. It glosses over all the external factors in a way that makes you want to jump up and shout "Oi!...What about...!?" with alarming regularity and you can't say the story rattles along with any kind of pace - its all a bit grim really .

In all, Damage is an entertaining movie, if you like you movies a little on the over-wrought, tormented side, so not really 'comfortable' viewing, but worth wasting a dull evening over.

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