SIESTA
A film review by Craig Good
Copyright 1988 Craig Good
I just love it when this happens. I went to see SIESTA mostly because I didn't know a thing about it, other than what the poster said (which wasn't much). I soon realized that I had either seen a review of it on the telly or a trailer, but I had forgotten anything said about it. So there I am watching the opening titles, and names start to roll by: Martin Sheen, Ellen Barkin, Grace Jones, Isabella Rosellini, Jody Foster. Jody Foster? Yup.
A name I didn't recognize was Mary Lambert, the director. Starting with a strange, stunning opening sequence she starts telling a story by inter-cutting with flashbacks. Barkin wakes up outdoors wearing nothing but a red dress. She finds somebody's blood all over it, and then realizes that she's lying at the foot of a runway. Things get rolling when she finds that she's in another country with no money, passport, nor idea how she got there. She gradually starts to remember things via flashbacks which parallel what's happening to her. She meets some very strange people and has some very strange things happen to her. None of them seem as strange as the stunt she was planning--to free-fall from an airplane into a burning net. You see, she's the strangest character in the film. Barkin, who didn't do that much for me somehow in THE BIG EASY, plays wonderfully all the way from An Eyeful down to a wretched mess as her character gets deeper and deeper into the nightmare.
Steamy, sardonic, slightly disorienting, SIESTA is almost impossible to pigeonhole. That's my favorite thing about it. It belongs in the slightly off-center bin with films such as TROUBLE IN MIND and AFTER HOURS, except toward the side of the bin with THE STUNTMAN in it. The slightly over-the-top dialogue seems strained at the beginning of the film, but perfectly natural by the end. Some of the scene transitions are really brilliant. Lambert leaves no doubt that she knows how to direct.
I love stumbling across a "find" like this. SIESTA is a horse of a different color. It may not achieve a great commercial success, but if you like off-the-wall, well-crafted movies as well as I do, you should check it out.
--Craig
...{ucbvax,pyramid,sun}!pixar!good
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