The film is shot on handheld video which gives something of an America's Funniest Home Videos feel to it. Okay it's not that bad but it's not good either. The look is very flat and lacks the emotional resonance of film. Color is heavily desaturated giving everything a grey dreary look. The camera work is frequently very jerky and consists largely of close ups. This becomes particularly unpleasant during conversations when the camera ping pongs back and forth between actors. It's not quite the stomach churning jerkiness of The Blair Witch Project but it is far from what you call smooth, or even professional.
The story is one of Selma, a Czech immigrant living in America in the early 1960s. She is slowly going blind due to a degenerative disease. The disease has been passed on to her son and he too will someday go blind if he doesn't receive an operation. She works at a local plant and fashions pins in her spare time to raise the money for the operation. They live in a small house they rent from a local cop and his wife.
One night Selma and the cop trade secrets. He is going broke due to his wife's spending but he can't bear himself to tell her they can't afford it. Selma tells him of going blind and her nest egg for her son. He of course puts two and two together and swipes her money. This leads to a confrontation where Selma kills him attempting to get the money back.
This story irritated me to no end. Selma isn't terribly bright and is stubborn as well. This puts her into a very vulnerable position which ends up ruining her life and probably her son's life as well. It was completely avoidable and in fact things could have gone rather nicely for her. She continually rejects a man who wants to be with her and help her. She ignores her friends and daydreams at work to the point that it costs her the job. Despite a strong performance by the singer Bjork in this role, the behavior of her character made it impossible to have any sympathy for her plight. The plot is every bit as simplistic as the character and it simply leaves no room for developing emotions for these characters. I could not wait for the movie to end and thus end my exposure to them.
Adding to the joy is that the movie is a musical of sorts. Selma is a huge fan of Hollywood musicals and she escapes the dreariness of her life by daydreaming that she is in one. The noises around her become the backbone of the music. Periodically the story is put temporarily aside for a musical number of varying size. This is also a bit hard to warm to as the music itself is hardly the stuff of a typical musical. Bjork's songs are a bit free form and unconventional which makes staging a dance routine to match is a bit dicey. Some of the numbers work but while the saturation of color is amplified in these scenes the cramped spaces and odd camera angles do a lot to rob the dance numbers of their grace. In particular, a number in a factory is hard to follow as the camera angles rarely allow a really good look at all the dancers, resulting in a mishmash of arms and legs flying about.
I said I have some grudging admiration for the movie because it features some strong performances. Bjork is not an accomplished actor but she creates a fully realized character with strong emotions. David Morse turns in a typically solid effort as the unfortunate policeman. Catherine Deneuve and Peter Stormare are also good as Selma's all too ignored friends. There is the core of a very good movie here but the director is working very hard at making a statement and being daring to the extent that he hamstrings the film's chances of working.
The typical movie goer should steer well clear of this film. It is one that works too hard at being different to take the time to be entertaining. Hard core movie buffs may enjoy the challenge of unraveling this movie but most people will probably just find it to be a headache.
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