This ambitious art-house paragon is an amalgam of three unrelated and stylistically disparate delineations. The vignettes at hand are segmented and shuffled together in sequence(an unusual approach which exerts considerable influence at first, but becomes a tad disengaging as the isochronal pace gains momentum).
We begin with a surreal pseudo-documentary concerning a masochistic little boy who allegedly disappeared into the sky after killing his abusive father. It's a disturbing and curious chapter with immoderately vanguard aesthetic flourishes, but weak performances blemish it markedly.
The second vignette is a B/W homage to McCarthy-era science fiction cinema, pitting a scientist against a sterile middle-class American community when he is fingered as "Patient Zero" in a bizarre contagion. This segment is nicely appointed, though the least original of the three.
The third installment is a testosterone-fueled homoerotic love tragedy which finds two men with an uncustomary childhood history reuniting within an atavistic penal institution. This is a gripping foray into the womanless world...a hyperbolic merging of daunting nightmare and celestial daydream. It's visually arresting, and charged with rough sexual voltage. The affected machismo, however, is quite palpably underlined by a sad longing for tenderness.
POISON is certainly going to be labeled a "difficult" film by the median viewership. Regardless, it's a unique and laudable effort, and despite some minor misgivings, a fairly ingenious and nimbly executed experiment. Too, it captures perfectly the zeitgeist of the era, when militance and fear of intimacy were given rise by the AIDS crisis.
Underrated... 8/10.
We begin with a surreal pseudo-documentary concerning a masochistic little boy who allegedly disappeared into the sky after killing his abusive father. It's a disturbing and curious chapter with immoderately vanguard aesthetic flourishes, but weak performances blemish it markedly.
The second vignette is a B/W homage to McCarthy-era science fiction cinema, pitting a scientist against a sterile middle-class American community when he is fingered as "Patient Zero" in a bizarre contagion. This segment is nicely appointed, though the least original of the three.
The third installment is a testosterone-fueled homoerotic love tragedy which finds two men with an uncustomary childhood history reuniting within an atavistic penal institution. This is a gripping foray into the womanless world...a hyperbolic merging of daunting nightmare and celestial daydream. It's visually arresting, and charged with rough sexual voltage. The affected machismo, however, is quite palpably underlined by a sad longing for tenderness.
POISON is certainly going to be labeled a "difficult" film by the median viewership. Regardless, it's a unique and laudable effort, and despite some minor misgivings, a fairly ingenious and nimbly executed experiment. Too, it captures perfectly the zeitgeist of the era, when militance and fear of intimacy were given rise by the AIDS crisis.
Underrated... 8/10.