The directorial debut of Tim Roth (thoroughly concealed behind the camera), a somber drama of sexual abuse in an isolated, stark, whitewashed country house on the Devonshire coast. It would be easy to tally up some anti-Hollywood points: the bad complexion on the introverted younger brother who wants to put a stop to the sodomizing of his passive sister; the swollen breasts and belly of Tilda Swinton, who evidently has just given birth in real life, as the oblivious mother; the equal coverage, in square inches if not allotted minutes, of male nudity. And the unfolding action turns up no "educational" nuggets on what makes a molester tick, or on how best to handle him. Actual positives — actual reasons to put yourself through it — are harder to muster. Good use of gray, windy, rainy weather and landscape; and the rosy-cheeked daughter, Lara Belmont, has a remarkable physical likeness to Swinton, even if the son hasn't. The actors in general are kept on a tighter leash than the one that Roth habitually strains and wriggles and lurches to obtain for himself. Any throttling of the cast does no great harm to the drama at hand, whatever it may do to our existing image of Roth's selfishness. Freddie Cunliffe, Ray Winstone. (1999) — Duncan Shepherd
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