Secret Window

10/23

Thriller/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/106mins
Starring: Johnny Depp, John Turturro, Maria Bello
Director: David Koepp
Columbia Pictures

The marketing blurb bills Secret Window as some kind of synergistic offspring of Stephen King and Johnny Depp, and for once the blurb
is about right. King is a rare beast, a popular writer with a big intelli-gence, while Depp is a rare beast of his own, a popular actor of genuine originality — and here the two do come together to make
a very likable film.

Depp is a successful writer living alone in a beautiful old house in a very picturesque area. The old house is just the place for a couple of lovebirds, but here's the rub: his missus has fled the coup to shack up with another bloke. Depp has writer's block and spends his days in sloth, napping on the couch.

He is rudely woken by a very sinister John Tuturro in a big hat, who claims Depp has plagiarised his story Secret Window. Depp can prove he published first but Tuturro turns out to be a very violent and unreasonable stalker with a ghost-like ability to pop up and disappear at will. The stalking drags Depp back into contact with the estranged wife and her bloke — and to tell you more would be unfair.

The cast bring to their roles a perfectly modulated eccentricity that turns what could have been run-of-the-mill jobs into real acting pleasure. And let's not forget the director, who may have had a hand in this. The direction is tense and gripping and even evokes claustrophobia but only ever takes itself as seriously as it has to.

Watch out for the first shot which takes us over a lake and into and around Depp's house without a break. How did he do that?
This being King you feel you are watching more than a thriller. You feel that this is a tale of being a writer, of the near schizophrenia of the creative process and the dangers of being locked in your own imagination too many hours of the day and night.

Monster

NOW SHOWING

True story, crime/US/English (Japanese subtitles)/111mins
Starring: Charlize Theron, Christina Ricci, Bruce Dern
Director: Patty Jenkins
Newmarket Films

Aileen Wuornos is notorious as America's first female serial killer, a woman demonised to the fullest abilities of the media. And indeed who can look kindly on a killer?

Monster seeks not to explain or excuse or sympathise, it merely observes, and the character and story are more complex than any vicarious or prurient press coverage. In this film there are no heroes, only perpetrators and victims of one sort or another.
There is also some extremely compelling acting from Charlize Theron and Christina Ricci.

Wuornos, born in 1956, was abandoned along with her brother by her parents while still an infant, got pregnant at 14 and soon turned to prostitution. She was arrested for the murders of seven men in 1991 and executed. She was not actually America's first serial killer, but her use of a gun (apparently unusual for women killers) and the fact that she was a prostitute killing her marks rather than the other way around, seemed to have caught the media's imagination.

Wuornos was devoid of sexual interest or emotion for a long time: her profession and its routine brutality drove such feeling out of her - until she met Selby Wall (Christina Ricci), an 18-year-old lesbian and potentially as much of a human stray as Wuornos. Wall seems to have unlocked some real passion in Wuornos, who as the older partner took on the role of protector and provider. In poignant irony she wanted to lavish on Wall all the nice things in life and it was this desire that led to murder: she robbed the dead men for her girlfriend. Yet at the same time the murders were revenge against the male sex that had brutalised her for much of her life.

Theron and Ricci are not just acting in this movie, they are lost in their parts. Wuornos is brash and almost masculine yet betrayed by gauchness and nerves; Wall is shallow and utterly affected, plucking her mannerisms from TV and movies.

Neither the director nor the actresses judge the characters: theirs is a job of statement. But for the audience conflicting inferences are inevitable.

Film Reviews: Chris Page

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