Crazycakes

I’m obsessed with a movie that makes most people uncomfortable. I haven’t met anyone who likes it as much I do anyway, that’s if they even know about it.
Very few movies can end coolly with a man, his wife and her brother walking slowly through the country side after a knock down drag out fight between the wife and her brother which precedes an incestuous sexual affair between the two.
Clive Owen and Saksia Reeves play the bother and sister, Richard and Natalie, who for reasons never really discovered, begin an affair shortly after she’s married Sinclair, a well to do stock forecaster with a large and largely inherited estate, played wonderfully by Alan Rickman. Two actors I absolutely adore in a movie which essentially manages to cover an illegal affair, AIDS and urban development while finding humor in the most tense, most uncomfortable and sometimes violent scenes. Not to mention the steamy sex scenes. I’ve watched it perhaps too many times. It also happens to be one of the most unattainable DVDs ever! No longer available on Amazon, it sells on Ebay for over a hundred dollars! WTF! I have no idea what it means. But it’s a movie I’d love to own. The pace of it is deliciously disturbing. And Alan Rickman’s character is just this unnervingly cool guy until he begins to suspect what’s happening. His demeanor is totally the opposite of his wife and brother who seem to be complete victims to their passion. Sinclair (even the name is obnoxious) seems the image of a balance of maturity and curious boyishness.

There is one scene I love where Sinclair begins to suspect that Natalie's recent weekend business trip was just an alibi to meet with another man. Natalie sits on Sinclair's lap in the spacious glass gazebo on their extensive grounds and calmly tells him which hotel she stayed at, a hotel Sinclair called in a panic when the dish washing machine broke down, and discovered she was not registered there. Alan Rickman’s eyes as he stares into hers are overcome with a temporary relief so compelling, I feel relieved for him although we all know the truth. He is absolutely an underrated performer.

As for Clive, well when his character breaks into tears at the prospect of his sister moving away to the U.S. with Sinclair, it’s as if you can sense his entire world is truly collapsing. One begins to understand this as just another interpretation of obsession born of that ever constant revelation that comes with age, that there are very few people in the world with whom we can ever truly be intimate with, if ever, and how difficult and painful it is when that connection is threatened.