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Fascination

2005, Movie, R, 95 mins

Fascination: Review

FASCINATION
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"Are you crazy?" asks the hapless hero of this sun-washed, purportedly steamy exercise in neo-noir cliche-slinging of the pudgy, dirty-nailed femme fatale who's just tried to drown him in a swimming pool. "Yes!" she exults, prompting him to... well, prompting him to do nothing except continue hanging around shirtless and looking sullen. This is far from the most preposterous moment in Klaus Menzel's debut feature which, though released theatrically by MGM, achieves depths of incompetence usually reserved for ultra-low-budget, direct-to-video, erotic thrillers. Wealthy Miami matron Maureen Doherty (Jacqueline Bisset) is abruptly widowed when her husband, high-powered businessman and one-time Olympic gold-medal swimmer Patrick (James Naughton), drowns during his morning swim. Much to the dismay of her son, aspiring composer Scott (Adam Garcia), she returns from a restorative cruise with a new swain, Oliver Vance (Stuart Wilson), on her arm. The lovebirds get married with unseemly haste, shocking both Scott and Oliver's visiting daughter, Kelly (Alice Evans). Scott, already troubled by the circumstances of his father's death, begins to wonder whether his mother might have had a hand in it. Complicated matters further, the new stepsiblings tumble into a sizzling affair, partly rooted in their common sense of loss: Kelly's mother died tragically when she was young, and for many years she suspected her father of complicity. While Maureen and Oliver are away on their honeymoon, the young lovers uncover both evidence of an affair that predated Patrick's death and that Patrick's blood-pressure medication may have been tampered with. But wait — there's more! It turns out that Kelly hasn't been entirely truthful about her past history or future intentions. This farrago, which Menzel directed, produced and wrote ("based on a screenplay by Daryl Haney and John Jacobs," the credits say cryptically), commits a striking number of sins against competent filmmaking. Exterior scenes are framed in claustrophobically tight close-up, presumably to hide the fact that the ostensible Miami locations are actually in Puerto Rico and a remarkable number of scenes feature dialogue delivered from off screen or by characters with their backs to the camera — shades of Doris Wishman! The leads — Australian Garcia playing American, and three U.K. natives — often deliver their lines in the jagged, awkward cadences of non-English speakers who've learned them phonetically. The less said about the story's twists and turns the better, except to warn that they become increasing preposterous with each passing minute. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
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