I was interested in seeing this movie when it appeared on cable, and it's principally interesting, as one of the first bits of work of Russell Crowe which are widely available. He does a fine job. Unfortunately I really can't recommend it. Whoever did the casting did a dreadful and fundamentally false job. Yes it's slow paced but it also has low intellectual density. There just isn't enough going on in this narrow little world. Worse a good lot of what is going on rings fundamentally false.
There certainly could be a great deal interesting about a blind man, Martin, and his long time faithful housekeeper (played by Picot), who's sexually and emotionally obsessed with him even though or maybe partly because he treats her coldly and even semi cruelly, while never acceding to her desires for intimate relations. Martin too has a twisted attraction to Picot, primarily because he can deny her, and yet she keeps coming back to him. We learn it all goes back to some lies Martin's convinced his mother repeatedly told him as a child, and related things. Into all this twisted pair comes the early twenties Russell Crowe, working for the moment as a restaurant kitchen worker, who surprisingly accedes to the blind man's at first very hesitant efforts to befriend him. Increasingly they do become genuine if strange friends, around the conceit of Martin's use of picture taking as "proof" that he's experiencing the world, and his need for someone to describe the pictures back to him "so he can label them". The housekeeper Picot finds this sunny friendship threatens her psychological pas de deux with Martin, and so a dark psychological triangle ensues.
A story like this lives or dies according to it's artistic understanding of human character dynamics and psychological forces. This Martin would simply not attract or hold Picot's interest. I get the mutual masochism/sadism going on, but those things require a sufficiently worthy subject to become darkly obsessed with to begin with. I see why Martin might be to Picot, but not at all why Picot would. That simply doesn't work. Martin doesn't have the female sexual attraction chops sufficient for a Picot. It's false.
OK she's a few years (about five) older (though she doesn't look it) though both are in their thirties, but she is good if not spectacular looking, thin and even has a rather naturally elegant and intelligent air about her. He's good enough looking but hardly suffused with charisma or edgie energy. Instead he's at least fairly nerdy looking, with absolutely nothing going on in his life, socially or achievement wise. He does essentially nothing.
For her to be obsessively attracted to a blind man is hardly impossible. If he were accomplished in some way, especially artistically, or rich or socially connected, or very intelligent and intellectually interesting, or at least had compelling and believable ambitions, then it could be believable. If he had a truly magnetic personality others, a number of others, would be attracted to him too. They aren't. Here he's not even in any social network. He lives a tiny almost hermit life.
Meanwhile, it's unbelievable enough that a woman of Pico's age (mid thirties), looks and intelligence, with no immigrant language challenges, would remain a long term housekeeper, much less one to a blind man in a pokey little flat, for little money.
Her obsessive attraction to him just doesn't work for fundamental reasons of female sexual dynamics. The mutual orphans at a young age thing and duet of dependent cruelness could well juice up and twist an initial sexual attraction based on a lot more than we have here, but as it is, it just doesn't compute. And so it tells us false things about people, and women.
I could say similar things about Crowe being attracted to Martin as a friend he spends lots of time with. Now if Martin were rich or well connected, or had knowledge of or entre into some other world that Crowe felt shut out of, that would be something else. But the Crowe of this film, though believably enough a "black sheep" who's irresponsible and has gone from job to job, is obviously a high testosterone stud of a guy. Crowe can play the introvert and often has, and does here as well, in addition to the tough "bad boy" side to him. It's not impossible that his character would accept the friend overtures of someone with Martin's personality. But it does seem will nigh impossible to me that he'd spent lots of time with this Martin who has so little to offer i.e. inhabited such a tiny, do nothing and know no one world as Martin does here.
If dark psychological dramas aren't based on true character dynamics, then really what are they worth? False insights are worse than useless.
There certainly could be a great deal interesting about a blind man, Martin, and his long time faithful housekeeper (played by Picot), who's sexually and emotionally obsessed with him even though or maybe partly because he treats her coldly and even semi cruelly, while never acceding to her desires for intimate relations. Martin too has a twisted attraction to Picot, primarily because he can deny her, and yet she keeps coming back to him. We learn it all goes back to some lies Martin's convinced his mother repeatedly told him as a child, and related things. Into all this twisted pair comes the early twenties Russell Crowe, working for the moment as a restaurant kitchen worker, who surprisingly accedes to the blind man's at first very hesitant efforts to befriend him. Increasingly they do become genuine if strange friends, around the conceit of Martin's use of picture taking as "proof" that he's experiencing the world, and his need for someone to describe the pictures back to him "so he can label them". The housekeeper Picot finds this sunny friendship threatens her psychological pas de deux with Martin, and so a dark psychological triangle ensues.
A story like this lives or dies according to it's artistic understanding of human character dynamics and psychological forces. This Martin would simply not attract or hold Picot's interest. I get the mutual masochism/sadism going on, but those things require a sufficiently worthy subject to become darkly obsessed with to begin with. I see why Martin might be to Picot, but not at all why Picot would. That simply doesn't work. Martin doesn't have the female sexual attraction chops sufficient for a Picot. It's false.
OK she's a few years (about five) older (though she doesn't look it) though both are in their thirties, but she is good if not spectacular looking, thin and even has a rather naturally elegant and intelligent air about her. He's good enough looking but hardly suffused with charisma or edgie energy. Instead he's at least fairly nerdy looking, with absolutely nothing going on in his life, socially or achievement wise. He does essentially nothing.
For her to be obsessively attracted to a blind man is hardly impossible. If he were accomplished in some way, especially artistically, or rich or socially connected, or very intelligent and intellectually interesting, or at least had compelling and believable ambitions, then it could be believable. If he had a truly magnetic personality others, a number of others, would be attracted to him too. They aren't. Here he's not even in any social network. He lives a tiny almost hermit life.
Meanwhile, it's unbelievable enough that a woman of Pico's age (mid thirties), looks and intelligence, with no immigrant language challenges, would remain a long term housekeeper, much less one to a blind man in a pokey little flat, for little money.
Her obsessive attraction to him just doesn't work for fundamental reasons of female sexual dynamics. The mutual orphans at a young age thing and duet of dependent cruelness could well juice up and twist an initial sexual attraction based on a lot more than we have here, but as it is, it just doesn't compute. And so it tells us false things about people, and women.
I could say similar things about Crowe being attracted to Martin as a friend he spends lots of time with. Now if Martin were rich or well connected, or had knowledge of or entre into some other world that Crowe felt shut out of, that would be something else. But the Crowe of this film, though believably enough a "black sheep" who's irresponsible and has gone from job to job, is obviously a high testosterone stud of a guy. Crowe can play the introvert and often has, and does here as well, in addition to the tough "bad boy" side to him. It's not impossible that his character would accept the friend overtures of someone with Martin's personality. But it does seem will nigh impossible to me that he'd spent lots of time with this Martin who has so little to offer i.e. inhabited such a tiny, do nothing and know no one world as Martin does here.
If dark psychological dramas aren't based on true character dynamics, then really what are they worth? False insights are worse than useless.