Powerful

Just perfect...

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.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

There are 2 versions of this movie: the sexually explicit one and the censored PG13 one. My review is about the PG13 one which is 91 mins and released in the USA as "The Black Widow" by First Look Entertainment. And when they say it's PG13, they ain't kidding. All the explicit sexual scenes are cut (including the infamous tampon scene you may have heard about), there is zero nudity, and all the swear words are dubbed out.This is a very minimalist film about isolation, disconnection and unanswered questions. It will confuse & irritate anyone who is looking for a standard plot tied up with a pretty ribbon. Like the Brando film "Last Tango in Paris", it gives us the dysfunctional romance of two people who can't or won't share their past, who have no connection to the present and who haven't got any future. The only glue that holds them together is the house.The house, known as the "Rubber House" due to it's twisted black appearance, becomes the 3rd character in the story, like a voyeur but more than that--almost like an omniscient presence that observes everything but tells nothing. Again, this may frustrate the viewer who is looking for clearcut answers, but the poetry of the situation is far more important.There is also a lot of poetry in the dialogue, but you have to work very hard to catch the hints. There's a brilliant scene in a restaurant where the waiter (played by the unforgettable Issach de Bankole) describes a dish called "deconstructed jambalaya"--a recipe that consists of all the elements of jambalaya (a word that literally means "mishmash") but separated into its parts, not allowed to mix. The hilarious deadpan delivery of this speech along with Dafoe's reaction sums up the characters' relationship perfectly. In another cute piece of dialogue, Giada talks about how mathematicians never grow up because, living in an isolated world of abstract concepts, the never learn about the reality of life. This takes us back to the theme of disconnection and the timelessness of isolation which we feel in the Rubber House. The whole movie is very cryptically written, but if you pay attention to theme, not plot, it will make perfect sense.The key to enjoying this film is to imagine it's the first film ever made. Don't compare it to anything. Don't expect anything. There are no shootouts, car chases, criminal masterminds, Hollywood romances or melodramatic tear-jerkers. If you can somehow scrub those preconceptions out of your mind, I think you'll find that this movie is much closer to a real story than anything you've seen in the last 20 years. Whether that's entertaining or not is entirely up to you.

I own 2 home entertainment stores and I've seen a lot of bad movies in my time but this one was so bad it compelled me to register here and comment on it. How bad was it? Let's just say that Sofia Coppola deserved an Oscar for her performance in Godfather III when compared to Giada Colagrande's in this movie.It was robotic and uninspired. Her lover has just died one month prior to her arrival at the 'Rubber House' he had given her. Once there, she discovers he has cheated on her throughout her relationship but none of it seems to register with her. Within a day, she starts a relationship with Leslie, (Dafoe) the caretaker of the house. Even though she is married to Dafoe off screen, her scenes with him were cold and unemotional.If there was a plot, I missed it. Not even Willem Dafoe could save this movie from the amateur, cinematic train wreck that it is.

This title seems more like a filming exercise than a film that should have been released to be seen by the public. For Dafoe and his wife it must have been fun working together in a film for the first time, without taking into consideration that people might actually watch it. I felt like it was 90mins wasted as I waited anxiously for a plot to develop, or even begin.Try to fit this film into a genre and you won't, because it lacks a beginning, middle or ending. I've seen 'arty' movies before and this doesn't even come close to being arty, abstract or original, it just seems to me to be completely pointless.I think it speaks for itself when the only persons that rated this film a 10 were the under 18 age group. No doubt for the constant pointless erotic scenes that the film was insistent on throwing at us. That is if you can call it erotic. It certainly didn't have taste.

Predictable, told a thousand times story with the usual drama in between, a couple of pretty raunchy sex scenes intermingled with some character paranoia, 70's style incidental violin horror music that is comical at times, i couldn't help chuckling to myself.I usually like Defoe, and it has to be said that the acting is not all that bad, the "plot" develops at a reasonable pace and does keep you guessing from time to time. Its just that it's all too predictable, i felt like i was watching a made for TV drama instead of a new movie. Maybe thats the style the directors wanted, but it has to be said that the review i read on here before i saw the movie could only have been written by someone involved in its production.Don't expect too much, and if i could wind the clock back i wouldn't have gone to see it at the cinema. I would wait for the bargain bins at your video shop, I'm sure it wont take long.