Roman Polanski comes as close here to his avowed ideal of the one-character movie as he has come since his feature debut, Knife in the Water: three characters. His third feature, Cul-de-Sac, came close also, and the isolated seaside surroundings of this one, coupled with Ben Kingsley's shaven pate (almost to Donald Pleasence specifications), bring that one irresistibly to mind. Less fortunately, the obdurate theatrical roots and the Big Theme -- political torture -- bring another movie more insistently to mind: the two-character Closet Land. You can never escape the contrivance: a woman in an unnamed South American country (the Concha y Toro wine bottle would suggest Chile, as would the nationality of the original playwright, Ariel Dorfman), still not fully recovered fifteen years after her blindfolded torture and rape, happens to be married to the lawyer who happens to have been picked by the new regime to head up a fact-finding commission on human-rights violations. The very night of his appointment he happens to have a flat tire on his way home, and happens to get a lift from a man whom the wife identifies by voice alone as her torturer. (That, and the cassette tape in his car of the titular Schubert quartet played as soothing background music in the torture chamber.) Tables get turned; issues get aired. The woman, as stormily portrayed by Sigourney Weaver, is unhinged enough to be freed somewhat from her duties as spokesperson, but not enough to be freed from mechanicality. Polanski, even in straits as tight as these, is always a painstaking craftsman, however, and the atmospheric specifics -- the rain, the misted-over lighthouse in the distance, every curtain and bedspread -- are vividly captured by cameraman Tonino Delli Colli. With Stuart Wilson. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd
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