So wrote the musician Nick Cave, whose songs invoke a despondent, bleak love the movies tend to shy away from, the new-to-DVD films Obsession and Attraction being two obvious exceptions. Each deals with, like the target of many a Cave tune, a pathetic torch-carrier, and though the literal similarities between Brian De Palma's 1976 Obsession and newcomer Russell De Grazier's Attraction end there, that is sufficient union. I don't mean to say that these films were influenced by Cave (in fact, Obsession is an unabashed reworking of Vertigo that predates Cave's first album), but that certain men are predisposed to self-critical art. And it's their kind of romance--the glamorization of love-inflicted suffering--that tends to get youthful men off.
Why, then, did both Obsession and Attraction fail to light my fire? While I've never been one to bemoan style in favour of substance (razzle-dazzle is the motion picture's birthright), where these films are concerned, keen visuals exaggerate the shortcomings of the material that inspired them. De Palma's camera (well, Vilmos Zsigmond's) creeps and leaps and glides and slides around total ciphers; Attraction is arrhythmically edited on purpose, but the tension this creates isn't all that immediate because one senses the actors anticipating the jump cuts.
Obsession is about the "Vertigo effect," how we pursue the doppelgängers of lovers past, just as Jimmy Stewart's snoop did in Hitchcock's classic. (Obsession's original title was "Déjà Vu.") Following Bernard Herrmann's searing overture, we meet wealthy Michael "Court" Courtland (Cliff Robertson) as he celebrates his tenth wedding anniversary in 1959. Later that night, his wife (Geneviève Bujold) and daughter are kidnapped. He follows some bad advice and pays their ransom in dummy bills, and they are sacrificed in the ensuing shoot-out/car chase. In an indisputable stroke of genius, the camera does a 360° pan of their gravesite, and by the time it's come full circle, the year is 1974; having been denied the intervening years, we appreciate what it's like for Court, a man who lives in the past.
Until he relives it. On vacation in Florence, Court meets and falls for Sandra (also Bujold), his wife's exact likeness. He proposes, she says yes, and their wedded bliss is again cut short by the missus' abduction, driving Court off the deep end. At least, that's what the dialogue in Paul Schrader's screenplay tells us: the same dopey grin is plastered to Robertson's face throughout, and like a stopped clock, it's only occasionally appropriate. Obsession is a technical exercise in which everything but the meticulous cinematography is too passive. De Palma makes Hitchcock look spontaneous, and his trotting out of the Hitchcock oldies (scissors for weapons, subjective crane shots) is not so much shameless as it is emotionless. Sure, I was a harp to Obsession's plot, which twists beyond the above synopsis, but it's not the deeply felt soul-searcher that is Vertigo.
Attraction is run-of-the-mill Trimark flash that, like Obsession, doesn't add up to much, yet its story and thematic developments are intriguing enough to sustain the film for its duration. Matthew Settle leads a hep cast as an advice columnist fittingly named Matthew. He's turned stalker on gorgeous ex Liz (Gretchen Mol), thus pushing her into the arms of his best friend, Garrett (Tom Everett Scott); Matthew then sleeps with Corey (Samantha Mathis), Liz's best friend, in a bid to win a sure-to-be jealous Liz back. But as the months pass, Matthew and Corey become cozy, and Garrett will have none of that.
Attraction's shift in focus to the nature of male friendships--how one in a pair is inevitably designated Second Banana, the spectator to his amigo's conquests--does not excuse the objectification of either Mol's character or Mathis', the latter of whom gets an arc involving her fear of public nudity. And while De Grazier's post-MTV, post-ADD, neon-coloured docu approach seems to give everybody the jitters, the male gaze hasn't been investigated so unflinchingly since In the Company of Men--the hard part is concerning yourself with this overpriveleged little group of hotties for very long. How much more interesting would Attraction and its ilk be if its stars were in our league?
Reports of Obsession looking lousy on DVD are greatly exaggerated. Braced for disappointment, I was in fact impressed by the 2.35:1, 16x9-enhanced image. The widescreen compositions are bold, often astonishing, and would be worth the price of this disc alone unless the transfer had major defects. The source print is hazy as per Zsigmond's usage of diffusion, and that might be what other reviews are misrepresenting as half-assed remastering or poor compression. Shadow detail is satisfactory, contrast and colour rendering clean, and any grain feels organic. The DD 5.1 remix is also good, bringing expanse--a lot of it--to Herrmann's infamous score, and dialogue is firmly stationed in the centre channel. No miracle, but preferable to the included mono track.
Laurent Bouzereau produced, as he has done for other upcoming De Palma DVDs, a retrospective for this disc called "Obsession Revealed" (35 mins.), featuring new interviews with Robertson, Bujold, Zsigmond, producer George Litto, and the director himself. (Schrader, normally game for this sort of thing, probably still resents De Palma for lopping off his script's original conclusion, at Herrmann's suggestion.) De Palma tells it like it is: he and Schrader drafted an outline immediately after a showing of Vertigo; he and the remaining participants paint a portrait of a remarkably pleasant shoot. All in all, a relatively candid making-of that casual viewers may enjoy for its insider dissection of Obsession's text and subtext. Rounding off the Columbia Tri-Star release are trailers for Obsession, Against All Odds, Devil in a Blue Dress, and Someone to Watch Over Me, plus various filmographies.
For quantity of supplemental material (more than is listed within the cover art), the Attraction DVD qualifies as a Special Edition in my book. De Grazier (annoyingly isolated on the left channel), director of photography Michael Price and editor Glenn Garland provide superb, if self-congratulatory, screen-specific commentary. Additionally, De Grazier is on screen for interview segments (indexed by topic, all), along with Mathis (who's adopted the affectations of frequent co-star Claire Danes), Mol, and Settle. A similar, albeit far more pretentious bonus is a set of talking-heads running fifteen minutes with Settle, Mol, Mathis and Scott in their Attraction personas. These were intended for excerpt within the film but only Settle's reached the final cut.
One of the most unexpected goodies is the years-old video for Joydrop's "Beautiful," a cool visual accompaniment for a cool song; one of the most expected goodies is Attraction's trailer. As for the 1.85:1, anamorphic widescreen presentation of the moodily lit film itself: it's sensational--Trimark has set the bar high for transfers of low-budget indies. The 5.1 Dolby Digital audio rocks out, too. Frequent split-surround and LFE activity surprise.-Bill Chambers
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