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Review
by
Brian Lindsey
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5
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8 |
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10
= Highest Rating |
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With
Sinful, his latest work to be released
on DVD, writer-director Tony Marsiglia again demonstrates his
talent for helming offbeat, intriguing, professional-looking films
with very little money and time at his disposal. Sinful
also affords lead actress Misty Mundae (AKA Erin Brown)
a chance to exercise her acting chops in the kind of challenging
role not typically associated with her image as a DTV sexploitation
scream queen. This is not erotica, nor is it really a horror film,
although it does possess elements of both. It's an intimate psychodrama
about how the envy of an emotionally-scarred young woman for her
pregnant neighbor leads to madness and tragedy.
Lilith (Mundae) is not a happy camper. Cut
off financially from her wealthy, abusive parents, she shares
a threadbare apartment with her unemployed husband (Ronnie Kerr)
and works a crummy job in a social services agency. Her marriage
is a dysfunctional wreck. Sexually unfulfilled, she and hubby
constantly bicker when they're not ignoring each other. More than
anything Lilith wants a child — it's the one thing that would
truly be hers. (She has a history of miscarriages and isn't
willing to consider adoption.) This all-consuming desire for motherhood
has become an unhealthy obsession, giving birth to a bitter frustration
that taints every aspect of her life. Then she meets Aisha (Erika
Smith), her new neighbor in the apartment next door.
Aisha seems to have it all: a loving husband with whom she has
great sex, a secure and happy home without financial worries (they
choose to live well below their means), and a womb swelling with
new life. Warm and empathetic, Aisha possesses a preternatural
goodness that sees only the best in people; thus she's blind to
the selfish rage festering within her new friend. Lilith, in her
quickening descent into madness, imagines a spiritual, symbiotic
relationship between herself and Aisha, to the point of believing
that somehow she has as much, if not more, to do with the latter's
pregnancy than Aisha's 'perfect' spouse (Nikos Psarras). Completely
over the edge now, Lilith takes Aisha's philosophy of life — "What's
mine is yours" — to literal extremes...
Shot in roughly five days on a tiny budget,
Sinful doesn't look or play like
a cheap quickie, especially
when one considers that the production was forced to pack up and
move to an improvised location in midstream. (Cops kicked cast
and crew out of the primary shooting location for want of a proper
permit.) Marsiglia, undaunted by a paucity of funds, makes the
limited resources work in behalf of his story. What was minimalist
by necessity became minimalist by design. Since most events are
viewed through the filter of Lilith's twisted psyche rather than
reality, a doctor's office, for example, can be as dark and shadowy
as a castle dungeon —
thereby camouflaging a serious dearth of set dressings. Teamed
again with DP Dang Lenawae, with whom he collaborated on Dr.
Jekyll & Mistress Hyde and Lust
for Dracula, Marsiglia successfully depicts Lilith's troubled
mindscape with the barest of materials. Aesthetic technique trumps
money (or rather, the lack of money) when there's genuine talent
behind the camera with a can-do attitude.
There's genuine talent in front of the camera, too. Atypical for
a microbudget film, even the supporting and bit players are almost
all uniformly good,
with Keller and Psarras,
as the husbands, and John Castine,
as Lilith's perverted father, particular standouts. The lion's
share of the acting kudos, however, belong to Misty Mundae. Having
garnered praise for her darkly comic turn in the Masters of
Horror episode Sick Girl, here
she essays perhaps her strongest dramatic role to date. This had
to have been a very difficult character to play, especially given
the brief shooting schedule, but she handles it with skill.
As
important as Misty's depiction of Lilith's madness is to making
the story work, Smith's contribution is equally vital. For us
to see Aisha as Lilith does, the pregnant character has to visibly
radiate an almost Zen-like sense of spiritual tranquility and
contentment — not an easy thing to convincingly pull off. Erika
Smith does so handily, thus illustrating the importance of casting.
The role isn't nearly as demanding as Mundae's and on paper could've
been played by any number of actors, but physically Smith is simply
perfect for it. The raven-haired beauty positively glows
at times with an inner luminance, which is exactly what the story
calls for.
From the above statements it's clear that
I found much to like and admire about Sinful.
That's not to say I'm
totally sold on it. The overly long opening and closing credits
seem like a desperate attempt to pad out an already short feature.
And with my square suburban mentality, raised entirely on pulp
fiction and pop culture, I tend to prefer more straightforward,
linear narratives, and am not terribly fond of the avant-garde.
I'm more than willing to either take the hint or fill in the blanks
myself when it comes to the meaning and subtext of events in a
film, but when I have a problem understanding exactly what those
events were to begin with... well, maybe I'm just lazy. Cut enough
anchors to reality in a story and I'm liable to lose interest.
But that's just me. Mileage with Sinful
will vary depending on one's penchant for
unconventional storytelling.
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POP
Cinema (formerly E.I. Independent) gives the film a fine release
under the Shock-O-Rama label. The anamorphic 1.78:1 transfer
leaves nothing to complain about provided one understands that,
shot as it was in Super 16mm, it's natural for the picture to exhibit
a light sheen of grain. A Dolby 2.0 stereo sound mix serves the
dialog and music well in this often quiet film.
Pleasing extras are to be found here. Among these
are five short featurettes: Smith's original audition tape, a sit-down
interview with Mundae, a behind-the-scenes/making-of piece, and
two video clips from the film's New Jersey International Film Festival
premier (including a post-screening Q and A session with Mundae,
Smith, and POP Cinema's Jeff Faoro). Director Marsiglia appears
on an interesting audio commentary; his rather laid-back style of
speaking can't disguise an abiding passion for filmmaking, albeit
one tempered by a sanguine view of the unexpected pitfalls a project
can encounter out of the blue. The trailer for Sinful
— which tries to market it as a horror/crime thriller — is provided,
as well as an insert booklet of liner notes (featuring a provocative
promotional still on the cover that makes the film look like a sexploitation
flick).
10/31/06 |
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