Saturday, July 22, 2023

The Emptiness (2023) Fantasia 2023


THE EMPTINESS plays like an Off Broadway play brought to the screen opening it up just a little bit. It’s largely set in a few rooms and concerns two women trying to keep a third woman from doing something stupid after she lost her husband. It plays in a weird way like a riff on Edward Albee’s Three Tall Women.

Mostly a black and white film with splashes of color now and again the film is a study in the mind of one woman in the face of bad turn. It takes a while to figure out what that is so I’m not going to reveal that. I will say that the film is frequently compelling.

At the top I mentioned that the film is like a play and while the director tries to keep thing moving the film can be kind of static. While I think this would have worked better on a stage, as a film things run out of steam after a certain point. Things are too limited and too obtuse to work at even at this films short feature length.  Personally I think this would have been a killer film at half the length.

While not bad, the films low key motions are going to rub a number of people the wrong way.

Worth a look for those who like slow moody films

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