Category Archives: Family Issues

Over under sideways down: Mental **

September 15, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 20, 2013)

I’m beginning to worry about Toni Collette. While I realize that she is an actor (and a damn fine one) who is playing a seriously unhinged character in P.J. Hogan’s Mental, it’s just that she’s played these seriously unhinged characters so frequently, and with such unflagging gusto, I am starting to wonder if this woman really is off her fucking rocker. And if she is, know that I’m not judging; after all, that’s what made the late great Jonathan Winters such a comedic genius (he actually did have a few screws loose…may he R.I.P.).

In this outing, Collette (who made her bones with movie audiences as Hogan’s leading lady in his wildly popular 1994 Australian import, Muriel’s Wedding) plays a Nanny from Hell named Shaz (think Mary Poppins meets Courtney Love). She hitchhikes into a New South Wales burg, accompanied by her trusty dog, Ripper. She’s picked up by Barry Moochmore (Anthony LaPaglia), an exasperated father of five daughters. He is at wit’s end, because his wife Shirley (Rebecca Gibney) who has a history of mental issues, believes that she is Maria von Trapp (in the opening, she serenades the neighbors and horrifies her kids by belting out a lively rendition of “The Sound of Music” while hanging laundry). Consequently, Barry, an ambitious politician, has sent his wife “on holiday” (the laughing house) on the eve of a campaign. What to do about his daughters?

For unfathomable reasons beyond the ken of any halfway responsible parent, Barry (who apparently spends so little quality time with his family that he can’t keep all his daughters’ names straight) offers the off-the-wall Shaz a gig as the family nanny. With his wife tucked away under psychiatric observation and his children under possibly psychotic supervision by a total stranger, Barry can now get back on track with his true passions: philandering and politicking. Needless to say, this highly dysfunctional home environment has imbued the Moochmore sisters with assorted neuroses of their own; but as we’ve learned from similar (and superior) films like Bill Forsyth’s Housekeeping and Eugene Corr’s Desert Bloom, it’s nothing the Kooky Free Spirited Auntie can’t cure.

A wild pastiche of general hysteria, screeching actors, busy sets and loud colors, Mental is a cacophonous, anxiety-inducing assault on the senses. Hogan told an interviewer that the story is loosely autobiographical, that there really was a “Shaz” who played a similar role in his childhood. That’s nice to know, but why turn such a potentially interesting personal memoir into what amounts to a live action Saturday morning cartoon? Now that I think about it, it is not unlike a Pedro Almodovar film; except Almodovar seems to know when to put a sock in it and allow his narrative to breathe a bit. While there’s something to be said for quirk, ebullience and verve (of which this film certainly has no shortage), Hogan refuses to let viewers up for air, leaving us to drown in his enthusiasm.

Cop on the Edge, Drama, Family Issues, Neo-Noir

Schenectady, NY: The Place Beyond the Pines ***

September 14, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on April 6, 2013)

It’s official. Ryan Gosling is the McQueen of his generation. He has already aced the Taciturn Pro Driver (in the 2011 film Drive) and now with this weekend’s opening of Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines, Gosling can add the Taciturn Pro Biker to his Steve cred.

Judging from the chorus of dreamy sighs that spontaneously erupted all about the auditorium when Gosling first appeared onscreen, perhaps “taciturn, ripped and tattooed” would be a more apt description of Luke Glanton, a carny who makes his living charging around the ‘cage of death’ on his motorcycle. When we meet him, the carnival is nearing the end of a run in Schenectady. Killing time between performances, Luke runs into Romina (Eva Mendes) a woman he had a fling with the previous time the carnival blew through town.

Romina is reticent to re-connect with the flighty Luke, for two major reasons: 1) The new man in her life (Mahershala Ali), and 2) A 1-year old bundle of joy named Jason that resulted from their fling. She doesn’t tell Luke about item #2, but he soon finds out anyway.

Now, Luke is determined to “do the right thing” and provide for his son. He promptly quits the carnival gig, accepts a job offer from a shady auto repair shop owner (Ben Mendelsohn) and sets about ingratiating himself back into Romina’s life (choosing to ignore that whole live-in boyfriend thing).

However, minimum wage isn’t fitting in with Luke’s timetable. In lieu of a raise, his boss helpfully suggests that he try robbing a few banks for supplemental income (a sideline that the auto shop owner himself has dabbled in on occasion). With his special skill sets, Luke discovers that he has a knack; soon earning himself a nickname in the local media as “The Moto-Bandit”.

Luke’s reckless approach to his newfound criminal career puts him on a karmic path with that of another young father with an infant son, a rookie cop named Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), and it is at this point that the film takes some unexpected turns. Without giving much away, we’ll just say Luke’s story is prologue for what evolves into a more sprawling, multi-generational tale in the Rich Man, Poor Man vein.

It can also be viewed as a three-part character study, with Officer Cross’s story taking up the middle third, culminating with a flash-forward 15 years down the road involving a tenuous relationship that develops between the now high-school-aged sons of the two men (Dane DeHaan as the older Jason and Emory Cohen as AJ Cross). There’s also a noirish subplot with echoes of James Mangold’s Cop Land; in fact one of its stars, Ray Liotta, is essentially reprising the same character he played there in Cianfrance’s film.

While it’s tempting to label Cianfrance’s screenplay (co-written with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder) as too sprawling at times (tossing everything into the mix…from classic film noir cycle tropes to Sirkian subtexts) he earns bonus points for coaxing uniformly excellent performances from the cast (particularly from Gosling, Cooper and the Brando-esque young Cohen), and for keeping true to its central themes: family legacies, the sins of the fathers, and the never-changing machinations of small town American politics.

Big Money, Drama, Family Issues

Our vines have sour grapes: You Will Be My Son **

September 6, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on September 21, 2013)

You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family. C’est le vie. That’s the gist of Gilles Legrand’s You Will Be My Son, an oft-told story of a dysfunctional family; in this case a vat of seething resentment fermenting in the confines of a Bordeaux region heirloom vineyard. I may not know a bottle of Batard Montrachet 1990 magnum from a boxed mountain Chablis in a taste test, but I do know my whines, and this vintage-style melodrama has a fine woodsy bouquet of neuroses; albeit with a rather predictable finish.

The relationship under examination is between father and son. Paul (Niels Arestrup) is a successful winemaker and owner of an estate valued at 30 million Euros. His son Martin (Larant Deustch) lives on the estate with wife Alice (Anne Marivin) and helps with office duties. Martin yearns to be given more responsibilities that will groom him for taking over the mantle , but the demanding and domineering Paul (a classic narcissistic personality) views Martin as the not-so heir apparent to the family business. Paul mocks his son when Martin reminds him about his college degree in wine making, telling him you must “have the palate” for it; he can only learn by doing.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to assess that Paul’s daily nitpicking is taking a psychic toll on Martin (“Do something about those nails,” Paul berates him at one point, grabbing his hand, “It’s unbecoming for a man.”). While Martin continues to sublimate his growing anger at his father (much to his wife’s chagrin), all those poisons that lurk in the mud are about to hatch out after Paul’s longtime family friend/estate manager Francois (Patrick Chesnais) reveals that has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

When Francois’ son Philippe (Nicolas Bridet) who has a stateside gig as “Coppola’s chief winemaker” comes home to spend time with his dying father, Paul’s mood palpably brightens. It turns out that Philippe, with his wine making talents, business savvy and personal charm, has all the requisite attributes of Paul’s idealized heir. Paul’s wishful thinking moves beyond the academic when he consults with his lawyer about the plausibility of adopting Philippe as his son. To Paul’s surprise and delight, it turns out to be doable (“It’s a wonder of our civil codes,” his lawyer says, glibly adding: “It’s led to many marvelous family feuds.”)

While it takes a while for the narrative to catch fire (the script, co-written by the director with Delphine de Vigan and Laure Gasparotto could have benefited from tightening), I was pulled in enough to develop a morbid curiosity as to which character was going to take the most shrapnel when this emotional powder keg inevitably made its earth-shattering ka-boom. I should warn you that none of the players in this soap opera are particularly likable, so it could be an uphill battle all the way for some viewers. Like some wines, you could store this one in the cellar to uncork when the mood dictates.

Drama, Family Issues, On Politics, War(s) on Terror

Homeland insecurity: Torn ***

September 5, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 23, 2013)

In the wake of the recent LAX shooting, The Islamic Monthly ran an interesting piece by its Senior Editor Arsalan Iftikhar, who made this pithy (and prescient) observation:

Now, the same right-wingers who would shout “terrorism” from the rooftops if the LAX airport shooter was a Muslim will likely avoid using the word “terrorism” at all since the shooter was a white Italian dude from Jersey. They will characterize this non-Muslim terrorist as a crazy kooky loner whose undiagnosed mental-health issues or work-related stress probably led to the attacks.

Also, these same right-wingers who always call for the “racial profiling” of Arabs and Muslims after every terrorist attack will now be silent since they would now have to call for the racial profiling of every 20-something white dude from New Jersey.

As if on cue, there’s a new indie called Torn (running in limited engagements) that tackles that meme head on. Set in a quiet Bay Area bedroom community, Jeremiah Birnbaum’s modestly budgeted drama opens with a dreamy, lazily-focused montage of pure, tranquil suburban-American imagery: shoppers at the mall, doing what shoppers do.

Shortly after the segment dissolves into heavenly white light (rarely a good sign), we learn through a TV news bulletin that Something Terrible Has Happened. There’s been an explosion at the mall (possibly a gas line), and there are fatalities.

The TV is in the home of an upscale Pakistani-American couple, Maryam (Mahnoor Baloch) and her husband Ali (Faran Tahir), both just home from work and setting the table for dinner. On their answering machine, they hear a message from their son, telling them he’s headed for the mall after school (I don’t think it’s a spoiler to tell you what that portends).

As the couple begins to deal with their soul-shattering grief in the days following the tragedy, Maryam forms a bond and strikes up a friendship with a woman named Lea (Dendrie Taylor), a divorced, financially-strapped single mother who has also lost a teenage son in the incident.

However, Maryam and Lea’s burgeoning relationship is about to hit a major roadblock. Police investigators discover irrefutable evidence that the explosion was caused by a homemade bomb. The detective in charge of the investigation (John Heard) informs Maryam and Ali that their late son is the prime suspect, and that the FBI has been called in.

Suspicion weighs even more heavily on the family when the local media dredges up the fact that Ali himself had been picked up and interrogated after 9/11 (although never charged). Lea gets caught up in the rush to judgment, lashing out at Maryam and then giving her the cold shoulder. Lea’s moral superiority is short-lived. It turns out another teenager killed in the explosion had been bullying her son; he had vowed revenge and is now being investigated as well (the shoe is now on the other foot).

Despite the setup, the odd red herring and the fact that there is a “reveal” in the final shot, Birnbaum’s film is not a “whodunit” so much as a “why do we?”. Why do we rush to judgment? Why do we always fear the Other? And why do we always find it so difficult to look in the mirror?

Screenwriter Michael Richter wisely keeps the police procedural elements on the back burner, instead focusing on these central questions, via the shifting dynamics of Maryam and Lea’s relationship.

In other words, by handing each protagonist a glass house and a bag of rocks, he is leveling the playing field; thereby he is daring the viewer (by proxy) to cast the first stone after examining his or her own fears and prejudices. And for the most part, this device works quite well, thanks to strong performances from Baloch and Taylor. The message has been proffered many times before, but until it finally “catches on”, perhaps it cannot be repeated enough.

Family Issues, Musical, Religion

Miracle on 125th Street: Black Nativity **1/2

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 30, 2013)

I make a concerted effort to avoid trite phrases like “warmhearted musical that the whole family can enjoy” when dashing off a film review. But when it, erm, comes to warmhearted musicals that the whole family can enjoy…you could do worse than Black Nativity, a Yule-themed musical adapted from Langston Hughes’ eponymous early 60s Off-Broadway play by writer-director Kasi Lemmons (Talk to Me).

Glossy as a Hallmark card (and just about as deep), the film nonetheless ambles along agreeably enough, thanks to a spirited cast and a blues-gospel tinged soundtrack. Jennifer Hudson plays a struggling single mom who lives in Baltimore with her teenage son, Langston (Jacob Latimore). She decides (much to Langston’s chagrin) that this Christmas would be as good a time as any for her son to get acquainted with her parents (Forest Whitaker and Angela Bassett) from whom she has been estranged for a number of years.

After a long bus ride to NYC (which yields the film’s best musical number, a haunting, beautifully arranged rendition of “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child”), Langston no sooner sets foot on Big Apple pavement than he’s being accused of theft and getting hauled off in handcuffs after an earnest attempt to return a wallet to a man who has absentmindedly left it on a store counter (I suspect I’m not the only audience member who flashed on the hapless newbie who gets racially profiled in the center section of Stevie Wonder’s “Living for the City”). Luckily, his grandfather (a reverend graced with the punny name Cornell Cobb) clears up the misunderstanding and gets him out of stir. Sullen Langston and his pious (if well-meaning) grandparents are off to a shaky start for their “getting to know you” romp, which includes the rev’s annual “Black Nativity” church event, family melodrama, and (wait for it) A Christmas Miracle.

Were the film not buoyed by the presence of the charismatic duo of Whitaker and Bassett, and the fact that someone is inspired to break into song every 6 or 7 minutes, the entire cast may have been in grave danger of drowning in clichés. Still, Lemmons’ film earns extra points almost by default, due to the fact that the “family holiday musical” is on the endangered species list. So if you’re into that sort of thing, hey…don’t let me be a cantankerous old Scrooge.

Documentary, Family Issues, Writers

SIFF 2013: Salma *1/2

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 25, 2013)

Salma (from UK director Kim Longinotto) profiles a Tamil poet named Salma (now 45) who spent her first 25 years sequestered at home. Her family was adhering to a strict “unwritten law” forbidding pubescent girls from venturing outside the house (even to attend school) until they are married off. Longinotto documents Salma as she visits her family for the first time in years; she points out the tiny window that provided her sole portal to the outside world. She found ways to smuggle her early work out of the house, eventually becoming renowned throughout India. While its subject is compelling, it pains me to say that the film, while obviously meant to inspire, is flat and dull, with virtually no poetry in its soul.

Documentary, Family Issues, Show Biz

SIFF 2013: Stories We Tell **1/2

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 18, 2013)

Canadian actress Sarah Polley has quietly made a name for herself as a feature film director in recent years (Away from Her, Take This Waltz). Now she turns the camera inward, for her documentary Stories We Tell. Polley uses her film as a sort of family therapy session, seeking to uncover the truth regarding her late mother’s rumored dalliances outside the marriage. Polley was 11 when her mother (also an actress) died of cancer. As Polley gently grills her father (a retired actor), siblings and long-time family friends, secrets, lies and unbelievable truths slowly burble to the surface, Rashomon-style. It teeters toward the navel-gazing side, but it unravels like a good mystery should.

Animated, Family Issues, Fantasy

Blu-ray reissue: My Neighbor Totoro ****

September 4, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 6, 2013)

My Neighbor Totoro – Disney Blu Ray

While this 1988 film was anime master’s Hayao Miyazaki’s fourth feature, it was one of his (and Studio Ghibli’s) first international hits. It’s a lovely tale about a young professor and his two daughters settling into their new country house (a “fixer-upper”) while Mom convalesces at a nearby hospital. The rambunctious 4 year-old goes exploring and stumbles into the verdant court of a “king” nestled within the roots of a gargantuan camphor tree. This king rules with a gentle hand; a benign forest spirit named Totoro (a furry, whiskered amalgam of every cuddly toy you ever cozied up to as a child).

Granted, it’s Miyazaki’s most simplistic and kid-friendly tale…but that’s not a put down. Miyazaki’s usual themes remain intact; the animation is breathtaking, the fantasy elements magical, yet the human characters remain down-to-earth and easy to relate to. A charmer. Disney’s HD transfer is excellent; all of the extras from the SD edition are ported over.

Big Money, Drama, Family Issues, Up the Workers

Crimes and misdemeanors: Elena ***

September 1, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on July 14, 2012)

Life is sustained by the grinding opposition of moral entities.

-Anthony Burgess

It quickly becomes apparent in the opening scenes of Russian director Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Elena that you are settling in to watch a film wherein nothing is going to quickly become apparent.

He holds a static shot of a tree bathed in the cool light of dawn for what must be at least three minutes. Aside from the cackling of crows, there doesn’t seem to be anything of particular significance going on.

Wait a minute…is that a window, beyond the branches? It is, in fact, a balcony window, but we can’t quite see in; the glass only reflects the burgeoning sunrise. And (crows aside) it’s quiet…too quiet. This gives the viewer ample time to ponder: What’s going on behind that window? Are those crows an omen?

Interior shots reveal a decidedly less sinister scenario; a well-appointed luxury apartment, where a plain, unassuming middle-aged woman shuts off her alarm and gets out of bed. Again, the director takes his time, documenting the minutiae of her morning ablutions. Just when we are about to assume she lives alone, she enters a different bedroom, drawing the curtains open to awaken a gentleman who is a number of years her senior. There is minimal verbal exchange.

As she diligently begins to prepare breakfast, new questions arise. Is she his live-in housekeeper? Or maybe a caregiver for an elderly relative? While arguably a bit of both, turns out she’s technically neither. Despite their undemonstrative behavior, they are married. Vladmir (Andrey Smirnov) is an aloof, well-do-do patrician, and Elena (Nadezhda Markina), a retired nurse, hails from a working class background.

Mundane breakfast chat reveals that Vladmir and Elena each have an adult child from previous marriages. Vladmir has a daughter, with who he is rarely in contact with. According to him, she is a self-centered “hedonist”, who “takes after her mother”. Still, he spoils her; sending her money to support her party girl lifestyle.

Much to Vladmir’s chagrin, Elena is off after breakfast to visit her son Sergei (Aleksey Rosen). Sergei, who is unemployed, relies on the money Elena funnels him from her monthly pension check to support himself, his wife, infant and teenage son.

Vladmir, despite his wealth, refuses to give Elena’s son financial support; to him, Sergei is a useless lay about who needs to “get his ass off the couch” and provide for his family. Elena, who has heard this tirade before, absorbs it all with quiet resignation.

Then, she’s off on a long slog via bus, train and shoe leather express to just beyond the outskirts of urban renewal, where Sergei and his family live in a drab, rundown beehive apartment complex (which, with its twitchy youth gang skulking about the stoop and trashed, graffiti-scrawled lobby, is reminiscent of the building where Alex and his droogs held their confabs in A Clockwork Orange).

The stark contrast in living quarters, along with Vladmir and Elena’s disparate social backgrounds are metaphors for the central themes of Zvyagintsev’s screenplay (co-written by Oleg Negin): the chasm between the haves and the have-nots, and instinct vs. morality (echoes of Kurosawa’s High and Low).

All the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out when Vladmir suffers a sudden heart attack. He is visited in the hospital by his estranged daughter (Elena Lyadova, in a standout turn). Despite her nihilist stance regarding Vladmir’s situation, father and daughter unexpectedly reconcile, inspiring Vladmir to make changes in his will.

This decision leads another character to make a moral choice that profoundly changes the family’s dynamics. When this decision occurs, it is so subtle and reflexive that you might miss it; but such is the banality of evil.

Zvyagintsev has served up a complexly flavored filet of dark Russian soul, spiced with a hint of Dostoyevsky, a sprig of Burgess and a dash of Hitchcock. You could describe his film as a “noir-ish thriller”, but not in the traditional sense.

For one thing, there are no suspenseful musical cues. In fact, save for a solitary Philip Glass piece that makes several brief appearances on the soundtrack, there’s no music to speak of (thankfully, the director is astute enough to realize that a little bit of Philip Glass goes a long, long way).

The deliberate pacing could be a deal-breaker for some; I’ll admit I found myself struggling a bit through the first hour or so. But if you are patient, you will come to realize that there is a Kubrickian precision to the construct. And you will finally grok what’s going on behind that window…it’s a primordial dance as old and familiar as human nature itself.

Cop on the Edge, Family Issues, Neo-Noir

Friedkin knocks one out of the trailer park: Killer Joe ***1/2

August 31, 2015 Dennis Hartley

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on August 25, 2012)

There’s a hard-boiled American crime film sub-genre one might dub “Texas Noir”, with its roots in the 1958 Orson Welles classic, Touch of Evil. Other notable examples are Sam Peckinpah’s original 1972 version of The Getaway, Bonnie and Clyde, The Sugarland Express, Wild at Heart, Lone Star, Blood Simple, The Hot Spot, No Country for Old Men, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and The Killer Inside Me. These films reside at the crossroads of sun-bleached adobe and permanent midnight; where a wellspring of deceit and malice burbles and roils just beneath the cowboy charm and a laid-back drawl.

The latest genre entry to hit the multiplex is a blackly funny and deliriously nasty piece of work called Killer Joe, from veteran director William Friedkin. Jim Thompson meets Sam Shepherd (with a whiff of Tennessee Williams) in this dysfunctional trailer trash-strewn tale of avarice, perversion and murder-for-hire, adapted for the screen by Tracy Letts from his own play. This is the second collaboration between director and writer, who teamed up in 2006 for the psychological horror film, Bug (which I have never seen).

Emile Hirsch is Chris, a low-level drug dealer who lives with his abusive alcoholic mother. As if his life wasn’t hellish enough, he’s up to his eyes in debt to a hood, who is threatening to take it out of his hide. This leaves Chris facing deadline pressure, with a short list of options for quick cash. Not being overly fond of his loutish mama, he decides to kill two birds with one stone by (figuratively) throwing her from the train and cashing in on her $50,000 life insurance policy. While he may not be the brightest piece of charcoal in the BBQ pit, he is savvy enough to realize that this will require collusion.

Enter the family: mouth-breathing auto mechanic daddy (Thomas Haden Church), slatternly stepmother Sharla (Gina Gershon) and his Lolita-ish nymphet sister Dottie (Juno Temple), who all live together in a cozy trailer home (now that I think about it, this family would feel right at home in a John Waters film). They tentatively approve of Chris’ plan to hire a Dallas police detective who moonlights as a hit man (Matthew McConaughey) to do the deed, with the assumption that the insurance will be paid out to Dottie.

“Killer” Joe (as our bad, bad cop is known) isn’t happy to learn that Chris doesn’t have the cash retainer. Joe is on the verge of cancelling when the virginal Dottie catches his eye. Hmm…perhaps we can work something out (I told you it was perverse).

While the noir tropes in the narrative may hold few surprises (the requisite red herrings and triple-crosses abound), the squeamish are forewarned that the 76 year-old Friedkin still has a formidable ability to startle unsuspecting viewers; proving you’re never too old to earn an NC-17 rating (I would expect no less from the man who directed The Exorcist, which remains one of the most viscerally unsettling films of all time).

That being said, those who appreciate the mordantly comic sensibilities of David Lynch, John Waters or the Coen brothers will find themselves giggling more often than gasping. The real litmus test occurs during the film’s climactic scene, which is so Grand Guignol that (depending on your sense of humor) you’ll either cringe and cover your eyes…or laugh yourself sick.

The biggest surprise is McConaughey’s nuanced work as the creepy, quietly menacing Joe. Frankly, I had written him off as an actor who had been steadily obfuscating fine early-career work in films like Dazed and Confused, Lone Star, and A Time to Kill by accepting relatively non-challenging roles in a forgettable string of boilerplate rom-coms (trust me…you won’t soon forget this film). Gershon camps it up with a cartoon rendering of a trailer park cougar, but that’s what makes her character so entertaining.

Newcomer Temple (daughter of British director Julien), is a revelation. She and McConaughey plunge fearlessly into a seduction scene that recalls controversial moments from Martin Scorsese’s 1991 remake of Cape Fear (involving Robert De Niro and Julliette Lewis) and Elia Kazan’s Baby Doll (Eli Wallach and Carroll Baker’s infamous “porch swing” exchange, which earned the 1956 film a “condemned” rating from the Catholic church’s Legion of Decency).

Judging by the umbrage taken by disgruntled audience members at the screening I attended, Friedkin’s enigmatic fade-out may leave some viewers feeling “cheated”, but those “old enough to remember” will get a chuckle out of the director’s obvious in-jokey homage to his vintage classic, The French Connection (well, that’s my theory). Granted, Killer Joe may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but if you’re seeking uncompromising, non-formulaic, adult fare…have a sip.