Dir. David Mackenzie, UK/Ireland, 2005, 99 mins
Cast:
Natasha Richardson,
Marton Csoka, Hugh Bonneville, Gus Lewis, Ian McKellen, Joss Ackland
It is wrong to like a melodrama? If so, then I stand accused for liking Asylum, particularly Natasha Richardson's amazing performance (and wardrobe) in this bleak, sexy tale based on Patrick McGrath's novel and directed by David Mackenzie.
Richardson plays Stella, a terribly beautiful and almost doomed-to-be-bored wife and mother, married to a loving if clumsy psychiatrist husband (nicely underplayed by Hugh Bonneville). The problem is this: we know she's in trouble the minute we see she's married to the shrink. Think about it: it's 50s Britain , she's a lively sexy woman and he's a rather dull head doctor. Who is going to win here? When the family follow father to his new role at a psychiatric hospital with high security, things start ticking. Some of the inmates are allowed to wander free, including a rather dishy number called Edgar Stark (Marton Csokas) whose smouldering good looks mark him out far and away as tastier than her husband. By the time the inevitable happens, Stark's smouldering might as well have set the dry wood ablaze.
Beautifully filmed, Asylum delivers a lovely, deep-dark tale of the rewards of immorality and the payback that happens to people who do wrong. The pace is timely and the performances are strong - this includes Ian McKellen in one of his better roles as the sneaky doctor Cleave and Gus Lewis as Charlie, the couple's son who doesn't know whose side he is on. Mackenzie's Young Adam comes from a similar vein - passion without love, sex fraught with danger - but Asylum is much tighter and more elegantly put together, with a better pace, than his previous effort.
Be warned: unless you like melodrama - and some may call it morbidity - Asylum won't be for you. For others, this is a shocking, stunning complete masterpiece.
Karen Krizanovich
Discuss this film here Asylum is currently available to rent. It is released to buy on UK region 2 DVD on 30th January, from Momentum Pictures
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