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Movies Forum Index » International Movies Forum » Review: Modern Love (2007)
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| strathalbions |
 Posted: Sun Jan 20, 2008 7:41 pm |
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From Wellington's daily DOMINION POST newspaper
Modern Love.
Directed by Alex Frayne.
Starring Mark Constable, Victoria Hill.
M. 95 minutes.
4 stars out of 4
Modern Love is a quietly brilliant and entirely unexpected film.
Here's a set up: John, a prosperous Adelaide businessman, inherits an
old fishing shack from his childhood mentor 'Old Tom'. Tom is dead -
apparently- by his own hand, and it falls to John to take over the
house, put Tom's affairs in order, and in doing so, revisit the past
that he has kept from his own family. John packs up his wife and young
son, and drives them to the haunts of his childhood. And there, things
take a turn for the frankly terrifying. Modern Love opens at a quiet
pace. Details are slowly sketched in, a family dynamic is convincingly
teased out of some sparse dialogue and nicely underplayed lead
performances. Comparisons to Kubrick's The Shining - Jack Nicholson
and family driving into the mountains to winter over in an old hotel-
are unavoidable and probably intentional: We know that things will go
terribly wrong, but we still hope, somehow, that these likable people
can avoid whatever it is that this place, and their own pasts, have
prepared for them. Its an old plot, but it hasn't been done quite this
well for decades. So if the pace of Modern Love's first few scenes
might seem a little sedentary, and if the film pretty much demands
that its audience sit up and pay attention, and even if director Alex
Frayne does occasionally wear his influences -Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Roeg
and Haneke at least I reckon- a little too proudly; then please: Take
all of that as a recommendation to go and see this disconcerting
little slice of Aussie Gothic. Modern Love is an audaciously
impressive low-budget gem: beautifully shot, stunningly sound tracked,
and written with a gentle malevolence that'll stay with you for days
after watching it. Modern Love is the best thing playing in town this
week. No contest.
Graeme Tuckett, 18 Jan |
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| Guest |
| Posted: Tue Jan 22, 2008 4:06 pm |
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Thanks for the interesting review. Some of those
influences seem more apetitizing than others
(Haneke, to be specific!). Speaking of Roeg
though -- have you seen his new film _Puff Ball_
or whatever it is called? I'm greatly looking forward
to it.
On Jan 20, 10:41 pm, strathalbions <strathalbi...@hotmail.com> wrote:
Quote: From Wellington's daily DOMINION POST newspaper
Modern Love.
Directed by Alex Frayne.
Starring Mark Constable, Victoria Hill.
M. 95 minutes.
4 stars out of 4
..., and even if director Alex
Frayne does occasionally wear his influences -Kubrick, Tarkovsky, Roeg
and Haneke at least I reckon- a little too proudly; then please: Take
all of that as a recommendation to go and see this disconcerting
little slice of Aussie Gothic. |
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