DELUSION
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
DELUSION is a film written and directed by Carl Colpaert, written by Colpaert and Kurt Voss, photographed by Geza Sinkovics, with music by Barry Adamson. It stars Jim Metzler, Kyle Secor, and Jennifer Rubin, with Jerry Orbach. Rated R, contains the f-word, some violence, and naked female breasts.
DELUSION is a handsome and interesting thriller, a kind of hommage to the B's. Jim Metzler plays the computer exec (George) who witnesses a car wreck in the Nevada desert and offers a ride to Chevy and Patti (Kyle Secor and Jennifer Rubin) who fall out of the overtuned car and into George's life.
Everyone is profoundly changed by this act of common kindness, as is the finest B tradition. George and Chevy have their own agendas, but Patti remains a cypher, the wildcard, the only free agent. George asks her whose side she was on; she answers in a swallowed whisper, "I'm on my own side."
Lyndol and I disagree on Patti. He sees her as another unrealized female character, with no past, no future, a void filled only by the male characters around her. I say her character is unformed at the beginning, that we learn little about her past, but we do know she's going to have a future quite independently of any other character. Certainly, she's the most interesting of the three principals as a human beings.
As an example of the over-the-top, David-Lynch extremist character, Kyle Secor's Chevy is pretty darn flashy and a delight to watch, but not human in any way that this human chooses to acknowledge. In some ways, Jim Metzler got the hardest job playing the victim that no one should want to root for. Men in general do not come off very attractively in this film, although I don't think of them as being bashed, merely realistically treated, certainly not to the extent that one feels a little bad about a man after seeing THELMA AND LOUISE.
As with virtually all the films I am really drawn to, this one features some minor character performances that nearly steal the show. Jerry Orbach does an admirable turn, first jokingly speaking of the advantages of being dead and then seeing something of the fallacies of this argument. Another actor, whose name I don't have here, has a short scene in a Las Vegas suite, a dance scene with Chevy and a bimbo, that is sure to remain one of the lasting memories I will have of DELUSION.
The cinematography is excellent, making the skeletonically beautiful desert a character in the film. Sinkovics has a way of making the desert gleam, even while avoiding most of the cliches of desert movies. I'm told the score is spare, but charged (I'm pretty much tone deaf).
This is a film about ambiguities and priorities. What's clear, what important. The ending is going to please some, irritate some, puzzle others, but it will give you something to talk about over your coffees afterwards.
I recommend DELUSION even at full prices. I do not expect the film to be shown much outside the arthouse circuit, but if you can, do go see it.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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