ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, January 20, 1996 TAG: 9601220012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: It came from the video store
SOURCE: MIKE MAYO
This week, three new releases deal with women and doctors.
"A Mother's Prayer" is a made-for-cable movie that's an obvious labor of love. AIDS is not a subject that's going to shake loose big bucks at any box office, and the film doesn't sugarcoat the subject. It's sometimes hard to watch, sometimes preachy and too earnest. But its arrival on home video still merits some mention.
The film is based on the true story of Rosemary Holmstrom (Linda Hamilton), a New York widow who discovers she has AIDS. Once she accepts her condition, she sets about to find someone to take care of her 8-year-old son, T.J., after her death.
That's pretty grim subject matter, and star Linda Hamilton doesn't pretty it up. In a telephone interview, she said that she concentrated on physical characteristics - speech patterns, dress, extreme weight loss - to play the role. That's easy to believe; as her character's health deteriorates, she becomes realistically gaunt. There's none of the dewy soft-focus treatment that films use so often to depict fatal diseases. This is rough, uncompromising stuff.
The real Rose Holmstrom died just before the production began filming in New York, but there's no overt sentimentality in her characterization. She's shown as a flawed, often angry and contrary woman who's trying to do the right thing despite a lot of uncertainty.
Linda Hamilton and the film's producers have already won awards from the cable industry, and they've been nominated for Golden Globes. Win or lose, "A Mother's Prayer" is one of those rare films that was made because someone - writer/executive producer Lee Rose - demanded that it be made. On home video, the right audience will find it.
"Safe" deals with similar subject matter, but writer-director Todd Haynes takes such perverse delight in keeping viewers off balance that the effect is radically different.
This is the fictional story of Carol White (Julianne Moore), a wealthy Southern California homemaker who gradually falls prey to an ill-defined and undiagnosable malady. At length - at tortuous length - she comes to decide that she's a victim of ``e.i.," environmental illness. The world makes her sick.
The film has several problems.
First, Carol is an almost completely passive character. She barely moves. Even at her sickest, when she looks really red-eyed and terrible, she's mostly numb. Haynes further distances her from the viewer by placing her at the edge of the frame in long shots, or posing her in the middle of stiff arrangements of characters. There are virtually no close-ups or reaction shots.
Second, the entire film is played out on an unemotional, mock-documentary level. Even when something as relatively exciting as a nosebleed or a small fit occurs, the characters barely acknowledge it. Why should we become involved? Why should we care?
Finally, that limited action is so slowly paced and understated that the film seems to be crawling through a clear viscous syrup. Before it's over, you begin to worry that "Safe" simply WILL NOT END! Instead, the spools of the cassette will turn slower and slower and slower, and the tape will be stuck in your VCR forever, and you'll never get to watch another movie because this one will go on from everlasting to everlasting.
If that doesn't sound too enticing, try some escapism.
After an uncertain beginning, "Synapse" settles down to become an entertaining piece of feminist science-fiction. It's set in one of those near-futures where wicked capitalist greedheads run everything. This time out they're called The Life Corporation, and the top executives will do anything to maintain power. Those who rebel are subject to summary justice resulting in confiscation of their bodies.
That, more or less, is the situation that our heroine Celeste (Karen Duffy) finds herself in, though it's really more complicated than that. The plot, screwy as it is, takes precedence over the poorly staged action scenes, and the acting is a cut above average for the genre. Unfortunately, the scene in which a woman performs brain surgery on herself isn't as neat or as gross as it could have been.
Next week: The absolute best in low-budget video!
New releases this week:
Waterworld i***
Starring Kevin Costner, Dennis Hopper, Jeanne Tripplehorn. Directed by Kevin Reynolds. MCA/Universal. 127 min. Rated PG-13 for violence, strong language, brief nudity.
Kevin Costner fans looking for another "Dances With Wolves" will be disappointed by this lightweight summer fluff; those looking for another "Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves" won't. Director Reynolds brings the same energetic visual style to this sea-going "Road Warrior," with some terrific scenes on a neat trimaran. It's neither the hit the studio wanted nor the disaster some had predicted.
Jade * 1/2
Starring David Caruso, Linda Fiorentino, Chazz Palminteri. Directed by William Friedkin. Paramount. 97 min. Rated R for strong sexual content, language, violence, brief nudity.
Think "Basic Instinct II." This imitative thriller has the same San Francisco setting and the same premise - naked kinky rich guy murdered in his mansion. The same heroes have the same crusty sidekicks and the same lust for the same suspects who are the same sexually voracious women. Even the car chases and glaring plot lapses are the same. All that's lacking is the steamy sexuality that Sharon Stone brought to the original.
The Essentials:
A Mother's Prayer *** MCA/Universal. 94 min. Rated PG-13 for subject matter, salty language, some domestic violence.
Safe ** Columbia TriStar. 119 min. (That's the official running time. It's actually six weeks long.) Rated R for subject matter, sexual content.
Synapse ** 1/2 WarnerVision. 89 min. Rated R for subject matter, violence, brief nudity, sexual content.
LENGTH: Long : 113 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Linda Hamilton stars in the true story of Rosemaryby CNBHolmstrom, whose diagnosis of AIDS sends her on a quest to find a
home for her son in ``A Mother's Prayer.''