Playing out like a bargain basement "Fatal Attraction", Fredrik Sundwall's "Hostage" tells the warmed-over story of a nice-guy protagonist who discovers that the woman he's dating is a card-carrying psycho.
While the milieu is at least promising -- transplanted Europeans in New York City -- debuting writer-director Sundwall ultimately proves to be more concerned with his conventional story line than with giving it a fresh context.
Ultimately, this Hollywood Film Festival entry slogs vacantly through its tired terrain.
Calvin Klein underwear model Marcus Schenkenberg stars as Adam Dahl, a 28-year-old Swede who has come to New York as an aspiring off-Broadway set designer and also to hook up with his smarmy half-brother Mark (David Arrow) and his mute, institutionalized half-sister Celia (former Jean-Paul Gaultier model Eve Salvail).
Adam believes he's found a little escape from all that Big Apple alienation in the alluring form of Eveline (Beatrice Macola), a mysterious guest at a party held by Mark and his pregnant wife Beatrice (Myriam Cyr) with whom he becomes smitten.
Soon Adam and Eveline (get it?) embark on a steamy tryst, but the more he becomes infatuated with her, the more he discovers the depths of her nasty dementia. Of course, despite his noble efforts to end the relationship, Adam learns the tough way that breaking up is hard to do.
Although Sundwall's scripting is tediously second-rate, he certainly has an eye for intriguing faces and, when not resorting to the kind of effects that are employed in every other music video, a nice sense of visual composition.
The acting, meanwhile, with its blend of accents, is similarly mixed.
While lead Schenkenberg is pleasant in a blank-slate kind of a way -- he's incapable of registering any real depth of emotion unless it's expressed as part of a stream of annoying voice-overs -- Macola's Eveline is convincingly off-kilter. She could give Glenn Close's Alex Forrest and her improvised rabbit stew a certifiably deranged run for her money.
HOSTAGE
Manifesto Films
A Crazy Prods. and
Manifesto Films co-production
Director-screenwriter: Fredrik Sundwall
Producers: Fredrik Sundwall, Nadia Leonelli
Director of photography: Goren Hallberg
Production designer: Stephen Beatrice
Editor: Anne McCabe
Music: Vytas Nagisetty
Color/stereo
Cast:
Adam: Marcus Schenkenberg
Eveline: Beatrice Macola
Celia: Eve Salvail
Beatrice: Myriam Cyr
Mark: David Arrow
Running time -- 80 minutes
No MPAA rating...
While the milieu is at least promising -- transplanted Europeans in New York City -- debuting writer-director Sundwall ultimately proves to be more concerned with his conventional story line than with giving it a fresh context.
Ultimately, this Hollywood Film Festival entry slogs vacantly through its tired terrain.
Calvin Klein underwear model Marcus Schenkenberg stars as Adam Dahl, a 28-year-old Swede who has come to New York as an aspiring off-Broadway set designer and also to hook up with his smarmy half-brother Mark (David Arrow) and his mute, institutionalized half-sister Celia (former Jean-Paul Gaultier model Eve Salvail).
Adam believes he's found a little escape from all that Big Apple alienation in the alluring form of Eveline (Beatrice Macola), a mysterious guest at a party held by Mark and his pregnant wife Beatrice (Myriam Cyr) with whom he becomes smitten.
Soon Adam and Eveline (get it?) embark on a steamy tryst, but the more he becomes infatuated with her, the more he discovers the depths of her nasty dementia. Of course, despite his noble efforts to end the relationship, Adam learns the tough way that breaking up is hard to do.
Although Sundwall's scripting is tediously second-rate, he certainly has an eye for intriguing faces and, when not resorting to the kind of effects that are employed in every other music video, a nice sense of visual composition.
The acting, meanwhile, with its blend of accents, is similarly mixed.
While lead Schenkenberg is pleasant in a blank-slate kind of a way -- he's incapable of registering any real depth of emotion unless it's expressed as part of a stream of annoying voice-overs -- Macola's Eveline is convincingly off-kilter. She could give Glenn Close's Alex Forrest and her improvised rabbit stew a certifiably deranged run for her money.
HOSTAGE
Manifesto Films
A Crazy Prods. and
Manifesto Films co-production
Director-screenwriter: Fredrik Sundwall
Producers: Fredrik Sundwall, Nadia Leonelli
Director of photography: Goren Hallberg
Production designer: Stephen Beatrice
Editor: Anne McCabe
Music: Vytas Nagisetty
Color/stereo
Cast:
Adam: Marcus Schenkenberg
Eveline: Beatrice Macola
Celia: Eve Salvail
Beatrice: Myriam Cyr
Mark: David Arrow
Running time -- 80 minutes
No MPAA rating...
- 8/12/1999
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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