Better In Your Head?--THE COMFORT OF STRANGERS

 

Spoiler Alert: it was this or Atonement.

THE BOOK-Written by Ian McEwan, released 1981

THE MOVIE-Directed by Paul Schrader, written by Harold Pinter, released 1990

THE STORY-When Scared meets Bold....Mary and Colin's Venice vacation isn't going great. Instead of rediscovering the spark, the couple become lost in the city's legendarily labyrinthine streets. Fortunes change after they make the acquaintance of another clever, attractive couple and abandon their shared common sense.

MIND THE GAP-The four characters are expertly drawn and resoundingly distasteful. Mary and Colin represent the easy prey who fancies itself elusive. Overly polite and excessively curious...and too self-absorbed to deduce the threat in their midst. 

Naked yoga on a marble floor. It's not just a choice; it's a lifestyle.

If the film pulls off one feat, it is in casting Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren as the vile Robert and Caroline, imbuing the characters with a charm undetected in McEwan's version. Conversely, Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson in the so-called "good" roles of Colin and Mary go over as well as replacing bacon with broccoli in a BLT. 

The movie belongs to Walken. Sounding like an Englishman trying out an Italian accent, his Robert is the Robert I read, aggressive yet amiable in his Armani threads. 

I lowered the book feeling the same as when I lifted it. One couple is basically decent, and drift apart without much challenge. In one final fit of delusion, they abandon the familiar and task aliens with the duty of rejuvenation. One couple is basically indecent, well-seasoned in the abyss, distorted yet functional. The conclusion of their journey did not move me as strongly as I wish it had. Young souls burgled, valuables smashed...it happens daily. Life is squabble. No discipline exists so rigorous that a practicing disciple can completely circumvent a fracas.

You go to Paris to live. You go to Venice to die.

BETTER IN YOUR HEAD-One of the most puzzling entries on 1001 Books To Read Before You Die is turned into one of the most puzzling selections of the Criterion Collection!

Ian McEwan hadn't yet wrangled his gift, so The Comfort Of Strangers is weighted down by lavish descriptions of unspectacular stuff and superfluous explanations. Also befuddling was the author's habit of recapping conversations that seemed more interesting than those he left in.

So, yeah, I'm no super fan of the book, but for all its pretensions and eccentricities, it's also an intense experience. The film is not. It is anti-intensity, really, in a way that indie films from 1988-1991 specialized in. Add in a different ending, and Schrader's film is just a lion cosplaying as a lamb. Oh, it looks good, of course it looks good, it was shot in fucking Venice. Sumptuous island squalor, reminding us of our ultimate uselessness, pass me another bottle of a dead guy's wine. Big deal.