CURDLED
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Miramax/Dimension) Starring: Angela Jones, William Baldwin, Bruce Ramsay, Barry Corbin, Mel Gorham. Screenplay: Reb Braddock, John Maass. Producers: John Maass, Raul Puig. Director: Reb Braddock. Running Time: 94 minutes. MPAA Rating: R (violence) Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
Accompanying the press materials for CURDLED were a few newspaper and magazine articles about actual services which clean up violent crime scenes, services like the one which is a key part of the film's premise. If you want a sure sign of an insecure rookie film-maker, that would be it. I suppose the idea is to impress upon us the real-world foundation of the story, but I simply don't care; an adept film-maker can sell me his premise over the course of his film. What the articles really tell me is that director and co-writer Reb Braddock found the concept for CURDLED in real life, and what the rest of the film tells me is that he didn't quite know what to do with it.
CURDLED is the story of Gabriela (Angela Jones), a Colombian immigrant living in Miami who is singularly fascinated by violent crimes. The scrapbook full of newspaper articles she collects about murders is not enough to satisfy her curiosity, particularly concerning a serial killer known as the Blue Blood Murderer. Then Gabriela discovers her dream job -- a company called Post Mortem Cleaning Services which tidies up after blood has been spilled. Gabriela loves her new job -- a bit too much for the liking of her co-worker Elena (Mel Gorham) -- and when one of the Blue Blood murder scenes comes up for assignment she leaps at the chance. What she doesn't know is that the victim left evidence identifying the killer as bartender Paul Guell (William Baldwin), and that he is coming back to do some cleaning up of his own.
For a while, CURDLED is perversely interesting simply because Gabriela is such a unique character. Angela Jones plays her almost as an innocent, like a child for whom death is still a question to be answered rather than something to be feared. She understands enough to know that other people will not consider her obsession normal, but her enthusiasm makes it difficult for her to contain herself, making for some uncomfortable moments with a potential romantic interest (Bruce Ramsay) and with her co-workers. The black humor in the script by Braddock and John Maass comes from watching Jones' off-beat performance as a woman who shows a wide-eyed glee at being right where dark deeds were done.
At least that is true at the beginning, when CURDLED appears to be a black comedy. At various points, it also tries to be a fairly conventional suspense thriller (with Baldwin hiding to avoid being found by Gabriela), a satire of media coverage of serial killings (including a faux tabloid-style TV program which makes reference to executive producer Quentin Tarantino's character in FROM DUSK TILL DAWN) and an intense psychodrama. The latter plays itself out in a confrontation between Gabriela and Paul in which he forces her to describe in detail the death of his last victim, and at that point it appears that Braddock is headed towards teaching Gabriela a lesson: the crimes she approaches with such abstract interest involve the real, painful deaths of real people. However, even that bit of character development is subverted for a cheap, easy gag. CURDLED seems to bounce from realism to surrealism with a capricious indifference.
Ultimately, this confusion points to a director who does not seem to be in control of his material or his characters. There is a lot going on at various points in CURDLED, but none of it leads anywhere: the central character doesn't grow, there is no real sub-text about human nature, and there is not even a consistent tone to allow it to work as a cathartic genre picture. It is evident that Braddock grabbed on to a basic situation with potential, and that he was able to create an intriguing central character to place in that situation, but that he just didn't know where to go from there. CURDLED sports a few neat stylistic flourishes, including an eye-catching opening title sequence and a great scene where Gabriela does a sensuous dance around a murder scene, but for the most part it is just one big, long, sick joke with a punch line that is not particularly worth the effort. Someone should have thought about telling a story, instead of just mailing one.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 messy scenes: 4.
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