Perfect Strangers
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Perfect Strangers
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Reviewed by Lee Shoquist
for Reel Movie Critic
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HH
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Cast
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Rachael Blake
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Melanie
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Sam Neill
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The Man
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Directed by Gaylene Preston. A dramatic thriller. Rated R (for violence, language and some sexuality). Running time: 98 minutes.
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When two lonely people strike up an unlikely one-night stand, the consequences lead to abduction, love, death and dementia. Sound romantic?
Melanie (Rachael Blake, memorable in "Lantana") is a waitress in a fish restaurant, whom we take one look at and immediately seem to know. She's been around the block more than a few times, is well into her thirties and through a veneer of cynicism is still holding out for true love, wandering the local pubs every night on the watch. One evening she meets a nameless man (Sam Neill) who, after coming back to her place, takes her hostage (!) on his yacht (shades of Neill's superior outing with Phillip Noyce, "Dead Calm") and prisoner on a nearby island. She's not immediately opposed to this aggressive and unusual courtship, until their sexual tension turns to violence and a cat and mouse game begins.
The story really starts to get interesting when the violence erupts, then dies down, and they actually do begin to fall in love, with Melanie nursing her lover back to health from a serious injury. For a time, they're castaways on the less-than-idyllic cay, and only when they attempt to leave does an unexpected plot twist get in the way of their happily-ever-after. Add to the mix a third character, Bill (Joel Tobeck), who stumbles upon the happy couple with steep consequences.
Director Gaylene Preston has created a gorgeous looking film, with several layers of surprise and mystery that are intended to be provocative but to me seem awfully calculated in their desire to be offbeat and at times, shocking. We don't know these characters well enough to care about the over-machinations of the admittedly original plot, so we're left with a cold exercise in emotional and physical one-upsmanship that goes off the rails and into dementia by the final reel. I lost interest long before the film ended, and since I didn't get to know either of the characters deeply enough, outside the dimensions of their romantic push-pull and violent, almost unbelievable courtship, I didn't much care for "Perfect Strangers."
The cast performs impeccably, even when the proceedings become increasingly silly, and both Blake and Neill have wholehearted conviction in the convolutions of the film's plot.
"Perfect Strangers" is a mildly entertaining mess that shoots for an original vision and winds up perfectly silly.
