Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, December 17, 1994 TAG: 9412200032
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: B-12 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHERINE REED STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The fact that a brief sexual relationship occurs - not actually depicted on camera - between Susan Aibelli, beautifully played by Alberta Watson, and Raymond Aibelli (Jeremy Davies) is discomfiting, but it seems more like a sad accident. In a home as dysfunctional as Raymond's, there are problems of a far more chronic - and common - variety.
It all begins when Ray, a pre-med student, comes home for the weekend to take care of his mother, who is bedridden with a compound leg fracture.
At least, he thinks it's just for the weekend.
He's about to begin a much-coveted internship with the surgeon general's office in Washington when his creepy salesman father Tom (Benjamin Hendrickson) picks him up at the bus station and informs him that he's going to have to pass up the internship and stay home with his mother. Tom's too busy to do it himself: He has to travel on business, sell motivational videotapes and have endless liaisons in hotel rooms.
Ray reluctantly begins a ritual of brushing the dog's teeth, emptying the bedpan and bringing his mother her medication. She lounges unhappily in a flannel bathrobe, her long, tan, toned leg rising from the rumpled bedsheets like a monument to temptation.
You see, Ray, who is probably 20 years old and sexually inexperienced, is struggling against the perception of his hometown friends and a new female acquaintance that he is some kind of freak. A nerd. The pressure hits him hard and, when he and mom have too much to drink one night, something very bad happens.
And then some other really bad things happen. Bad begets worse, and the tiny confines of Ray's reality - his parents' modest house, the road down which he walks the dog, the backseat of his friend's car, the bathroom in which he tries to get some privacy - become tinier still.
The film is shot in close-up and closer-still, adding to the feeling of claustrophobia, and the camera's attention is captured by the things with which Ray is preoccupied. It's enough to provoke a headache, but it is also extremely effective in driving home the fact of this sad character's limited options. Ray should be looking forward to a bright future, but his screwed-up parents are shutting him down.
There's really not much point in trying to argue that this movie is a comedy: There are moments that are meant to be funny, and a few wry lines, but the laughs gets caught in the throat. Confused Raymond, his sad mother and his selfish father are far too tragic to be comic.
And it would be hard to recommend this movie to most of the movie-going public because it is hard to watch.
But there is something really gutsy about a movie that gets nose-to-nose with a subject as unsavory as incest and doesn't treat family dysfunction in such broad terms that it becomes meaningless.
Spanking the Monkey ***
A Fine Line Features release showing at the Grandin Theatre. 1 hour 46 minutes. Unrated.
by CNB