Touches You

Sadly Over-hyped

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

I noticed that IMDb lists this as belonging to three genres--comedy, drama and romance. Well, this is a strange combination and the film is NOT a comedy. Folks should be aware of this, as the movie could seriously depress you and make you feel miserable when you're just looking to have a laugh.Wilbur (Jamie Sives) is a screwed up guy. Again and again and again he tries to kill himself but each time he's discovered and rushed to the hospital. It's happened so often that the support group at the hospital doesn't want him back! And, during all this, his very decent brother, Harbour (Adrian Rawlins) is there for him--and amazingly patient in spite of all this--perhaps too patient. Part of this might be because he loves Wilbur, but later you find that it might have to do with the reason Wilbur feels a need to die.Despite all this chaos, Harbour decides to marry and he brings a woman and her young daughter into the household. What's to happen with Wilbur? And, what's to happen to everyone when Harbour learns some very, very bad news?The acting in this film is very restrained but good. However, I cannot score the film higher because the script is so odd--starting off somewhat like a comedy and then leaving the viewer wanting to kill themselves as well! Dark, depressing and definitely a film that will only appeal to a narrow audience.

"Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself" may be the single worst movie I've ever watched from beginning to end, and I've seen "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." "Wilbur" is the product of some fringe studio that goes out of its way to hire cinematographers whose use of light and space make actors look like lumps of ordure on screen, scriptwriters who are one grade above monkeys trained to bang on keyboards, directors who suffer from cognitive retardation and can't grasp three dimensional space or movement, and actors who are desperate to appear in any piece of drek, no matter how dreadful. How movies like this get made when brilliantly talented people can't sell their work is a mystery more confounding than any presented by Area 51 or the Bermuda Triangle.Wilbur is a twenty-something, suicidal Scott. He lives with his brother, the ostentatiously named Harbour, and always makes sure that his suicide attempts will wreck maximum damage on Harbour's sensitive soul. The audience is supposed to love Wilbur; he's supposed to be the funny, poignant, sexy, romantic lead. Not.Harbour is a bit of a masochist, and does nothing to protect himself from Wilbur's venom. That's because this movie is as divorced from any reality of any human heart or mind as possible. Harbour, in a scene lasting maybe two seconds, falls in love with Alice, a depressive cleaning woman so out of touch with consensus reality that she can't clean properly, and gets fired. Later, she wears a stained blouse, a flowered skirt, and loud tartan tights to a birthday party, where children mock her attire, as well they should. Later Harbour vomits in a Muslim girl's expensive, golden dress. Ha, ha, ha. Oh, and the Muslim girl is named Fatimah, as is her mother. This is meant to cause big laughs.Harbour and Alice marry, and Wilbur, in between suicide attempts, cheats with Alice on Harbour, who goes through a lingering and painful-looking death by pancreatic cancer. Wilbur and Alice don't even bother to purchase a headstone for Harbour, their masochistic savior. The End. I kept watching this movie mostly to see how bad it could get. In its descent from merely unpleasant and incompetent to unforgettably repulsive, it did not disappoint.

I get suspicious when movies push lessons about life, as if movie realities can substitute for, rather than amplify, actual experience.In this, you're seeing the Genesis story of Jacob and Esau...this includes the parents who 'played favorites', the 'elder brother serving the younger', and the behind the scenes double cross ("Is that why he is called Jacob, because he has deceived me these two times?"). When Sives fails to suicide, his description of the nothingness is the revocation of Jacob's dream of the glorious ladder to Heaven. He wrestles an angel (the water rescue), and thence receives his blessing.So that's *what* it is -- can one launch a dark comedy off this platform?I think this was a shameful missed opportunity to stick to just that -- notions of comedy. It is crushed by the self-important tone of the drama, and the utterly unimaginative camera work. Also, there was a chance to augment this with borrowings from Kipling -- who knew how to be darkly self-effacing -- but all we get are the collections of dead writers (the bookstore).

Wilbur, who is seemingly unreasonably yet persistently suicidal, cannot live with himself. Harbour, his caring and gentle brother, can't live without Wilbur. The deaths of their parents has affected both brothers differently, making one unable to live normally, and the other unable to live without the abnormality of having someone to care for. Into this dysfunction comes Alice, a struggling single parent who has a sad sweetness that Harbour cannot resist. They woo, and marry, and as their happiness begins to infuse the lives of all four, a family begins to take shape, despite the resistance that each feels. It is from the quadrangle they form that Wilbur finally finds what is missing in his own life, and wants what his brother has so easily grasped: that love, in the forms and shapes around us, is all that will eventually make life worth living. So enlightened, he unwittingly grabs hold of his brother's love, and takes some for his own; Alice, though guilty, is not unwilling. She has fallen in love with both brothers, equally, but differently. Her daughter, somewhat underplayed, becomes a pivot around which the three focus their energies, trying desperately not to hurt each other anymore than will be absolutely necessary. A bit of deus ex machina takes over (or perhaps it is simply fate stepping in?) and Harbour must bow out due to incurable cancer of the pancreas. It's hard to watch both the despair, as well as hope, rising in both Wilbur's and Alice's eyes as they find out what the ultimate conclusion will be; and they struggle with both their guilt and their excitement. But Alice does not waiver in her love for Harbour, and even though they /can/ hurt him, neither she nor Wilbur is willing to go that far. What will become of Wilbur and Alice and the child? It is not obvious. It hurts to watch the transitions each makes in their thought processes at times, but would any of us have done any differently? Still, there is satisfaction in the ending and one is left with the aftertaste of something larger than oneself probably knowing more and better than we do. Though the story can be a bit contrived, it is worth watching. We aren't brought to tears by the poignancy, nor are we appalled by the actions of the characters; we are simply aware that they are human,and fallible. That's enough sometimes.