Tuesday 6 December 2016

The Cry of the Owl (2009 Jamie Thraves & scr)

Based on 1962 Patricia Highsmith novel. Fifty minutes in we're still wondering who is nuts and who will be killed, but by this time everyone's looking dodgy: Paddy Considine (mental breakdown), Julia Stiles (stalker), James Gilbert (volatile boyfriend) and ex Caroline Dhavernas (bitch). Plot is sinewy, leaves audience with cliffhanger. (Not sure we care greatly about the main character, a problem which Highsmith herself had).

I think there's one nutter too many, and Stiles' suicide seems bonkers. I think I would have written her as the normal and supportive character, who finds herself beginning to suspect Considine. Thus maybe making her the sympathetic one? There you go, I'll go off and rewrite it.

Dark photography in widescreen by Luc Montpellier, brooding score by Jeff Danna. Shot in Canada, a Canadian-German co-production.

Thraves made music videos Including Radiohead's 'Just', the short I Just Want to Kiss You in 1997 with Martin Freeman, and debuted in 2000 with The Low Down which has mixed reviews, some of the 'brilliant' sort. His material here is nicely restrained.

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