Freud's
Second Law (2001)
Note: Spoilers. If you can
spoil something that's already rotten!
In a title card that appears early in the abysmal
"Freud's Second Law," the scripter suggests that "real
life seems to have no plot." A children's play has more
plot than this film. A grocery list has more plot than
this film. This visually drab, poorly acted, annoying
film has almost nothing to say. It has one interesting
plot idea, which could make for a remarkable film, and
it shits it out, pays little or no attention to it,
and moves back into being horrid. What a waste of 80
minutes.
The film should have been interesting and right up
my alley, so to speak. The first shot is a fully clothed
woman sitting on a counter-top wearing a HUGE strap
on and smoking a cigarette. But filmmaker Ian Gamazon,
who does almost everything behind the camera here, soon
segues into one of the most slow moving and dull sequences
ever to be lensed. His seeming non-film obviously has
no budget, so he overcomes this obstacle by having no
dialogue. Scenes evolve with foley or wild sound throughout.
It is 20 minutes into the film before anyone is shown
to speak. And it's a really long and dull 20 minutes.
Gamazon also uses pop music, radio station chatter,
and books on tape - yes, books on tape, to provide sound
for his film. And the sound is atrocious. The music
sounds as if it were taped on cheap old cassettes off
of AM radio.
This might all be fine and dandy if the film were
visually interesting. It is not. The lead character,
a female who we eventually hear named as Rachael, does
nothing. Nothing. She plays with a snail to remind us
of just how fucking slow the film is and what ridiculous
dolts we are for watching it. The film's visuals are
technically adept. But they are devoid of artistry and
imagination.
One of the scenes most tepid scenes appears when dialogue
is finally utilized. In it, Rachael sits and recites
a litany of things she is afraid of, such as, "I'm afraid
of cheesecake. I'm afraid of growing old." Surely one
of the things she is not afraid of is boring us to tears.
And eventually a tiny plot, really an idea of a plot,
evolves. But it is never fully realized. The story finds
the protagonist, who has been cuckold by her boyfriend
(isn't it time to make the term genderless?), finally
breaking out of her sheer boredom and taking revenge
on a couple of men who have treated her friends badly.
She abducts them and anally rapes them with the aforementioned
strap-on. These scenes are brutal. Finally the film
has a little breath. But it is too little, too late.
And worse, the film has Rachael seeming to fall in love
with one of the men she has "raped." I think she is
somehow to supposedly realize he is innocent. Gamazon
is such an awful filmmaker I really didn't understand
that part.
I don't know what "Freud's Second Law" is. Lodger's
first law is this: Don't see this film.
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