A Closed Book (2012)

Such a frustrating disappointment

People are voting emotionally.

hyped garbage

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

I think the top review by derektrottersk says it all. The reviews are too harsh on this movie. It's actually an intelligent, theatrical drawing-room drama about a sophisticated but blind art critic and his quiet and beautiful amanuensis. Each turns out to be not as they seem. Some of the dramatic tension comes from Sir Paul's blindness, and how he and those close to him deal with it. Some drama arises out of the scenario of a beautiful new woman living together with a difficult, handicapped old man in this grand manor house. I thought it was well played by both Conti and Hannah. Not a movie to be avoided.

A tense, well paced mystery that delivers a superb, unexpected ending. I felt very intellectually energized after it ended. You think you know what it's all about and then when you're settled in your sofa you get a jolt. The main character makes you feel a bit uneasy throughout. Conti plays him brilliantly with understated panache and a great sense of self. Hannah is very convincing as the soft spoken aide with a secret agenda. As she starts to get under his skin, and yours, the story keeps you in a tight grip. I like how the horrific creepiness is left off screen, mentioned briefly, like a lightning bolt that changes the very air particles in the room. Never melodramatic, the story is bare, harsh, and proves the startling power of truth.

I wasn't sure what to expect of this film but thought the cast list made it worth a look. Having just finished watching it, I'm still not entirely sure whether or not I enjoyed it but it was certainly interesting and somewhat compelling.It is a thriller and there are several moments of suspense and moments where I found myself taking a sharp intake of breath, but it is certainly not particularly scary or shocking. The best moment, for me, was the ending which, even though I realised what was going to happen, was well-executed and did make me jump.Elaine Paige is a very strange choice for one of the cameo roles and I'm not sure what prompted her casting, and (sorry if it sounds trivial) I found Daryl Hannah's "new" facial appearance rather distracting. Tom Conti's character is rather wooden at times and, at other times, is rather moving and interesting. Miriam Margolyes is one of my favourite actors but is given no opportunity at all to shine.All in all? As I said in my title, strange but rather compelling. Definitely worth watching but just don't set your expectations too high.

As A Closed Book begins, distinguished author Sir Paul is planning on writing his first book since a head injury that made him completely blind four years previously. In order to do this he needs a helper so he hires Jane Ryder, an intelligent but mysterious woman who agrees to live with him in his baroque mansion five days a week. Sir Paul is unsurprisingly a fussy, arrogant man who would likely be hard for anyone to deal with. Still, it's hard not to feel sympathy for him as it quickly becomes clear that Jane takes sadistic pleasure in deceiving him. This starts out harmlessly enough with lies about a jigsaw puzzle and made up news stories about the murder of Madonna and the suicide of O.J. Simpson but progresses into harmful territory as she begins to rearrange the furniture and leave books on the stairs. The last few minutes of the film involve some hastily applied twists that don't really give the viewer much of a chance to comprehend the way the situation has changed before the next one appears. As suspense thrillers go, this is pretty standard fare in the plot department.Since this is a film by maverick auteur Raoul Ruiz the writing is naturally the least important part of the film; as usual his films rely on his unique sensibilities to succeed. For a Ruiz film A Closed Book is fairly low key: there are plenty of unusual angles and the frame tends to be filled with sumptuous details but the camera movements are standard save for the scene in which Jane brazenly tells Sir Paul nonsensical lies as the camera spins wildly directly overhead. There is also an emphasis on the house's architecture, particularly the baroque exterior with its spirals and turrets. A Closed Book is not a film that breaks new ground for Ruiz, in fact the style calls to mind all of the Ruiz films I've seen from the past decade or so including Time Regained, Comedy of Innocence, and That Day but his style is so rich that he could easily spend another twenty years working within it and not exhaust its possibilities.Somewhat perversely for a film released this year, A Closed Book has already been released on R2 DVD. It's also worth noting that the film seems to have been universally judged by the least important aspect of this particular work: the script. This surely accounts for its absurdly low IMDb score (4.7 as of this writing) and the score of negative reviews it has received from critics who view it as a genre film.