*½/****
starring Emily Hampshire, Jacob Tierney
screenplay by Jerry Ciccoritti, based on the play by Tom Walmsley
directed by Jerry Ciccoritti
by Bill Chambers Just the other day I watched Dial M for Murder, a single-set movie faithfully adapted from a stage play that never quite becomes theatre-on-film because, let's face it, we're talking about Alfred Hitchcock here. Jerry Ciccoritti is no Alfred Hitchcock–not that Ciccoritti's Blood wants or tries to be Dial M for Murder, but its Mike Figgis, let's-see-what-this-button-does aesthetic so reeks of overcompensation as to end up not only preserving the material's stage roots in amber, but also lulling us into a stupor. No doubt there's some method to Ciccoritti's onaninistic use of his editing console, an endeavouring to mirror, echo, or otherwise amplify his characters' addled state of mind, but Blood's subject matter is alien enough that a more straightforward shooting style might have proved less disengaging. Credit where credit is due that Ciccoritti–a pillar, as the co-founder of the Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Company, of Toronto's queer and goth communities–is not an apprehensive or antiseptic director like most of his Canuck brethren (the eight-time Gemini Award winner surely benefited from working at the pace of television in that regard), but Blood, a stream-of-consciousness chamber piece about a part-time hooker (Neve Campbell-ish Emily Hampshire) deciding whether or not to make her own brother (filmmaker Jacob Tierney) the third party in an impending ménage à trois when he shows up at her door after a years-long absence, is nothing if not uniquely Canadian in its use of sex as a threat rather than as a promise. Programme: Visions
