The Cement Garden
Picture: C
Sound: C+ Extras: D Film: B-
Writer/Director Andrew Birkin has experience that gives
him an edge as a filmmaker. He worked
with Stanley Kubrick as an assistant on 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and
his tragically aborted Napoleon epic.
That experience certainly helps him in his adaptation of Ian McEwan’s The
Cement Garden (1992), a very challenging book about a standard family
set-up, and how it tragically disintegrates.
The film focuses on the family, but especially in
15-year-old Jack (Andrew Robertson), who is becoming quickly aware of his
sexuality. Though he goes to school and
knows people, he is so a part of his family that it is not enough. Besides masturbation, he is having more than
a passing interest in his sister (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Alone to himself one day, he comes out of
hiding to find that his father has died of a heart attack trying to take care
of the family garden.
That leaves him with their mother (Sinead Cusack) and his
three siblings. The sex issues continue
to increase, when the mother dies! In
order not to land up being split-up and sent to “child services” and adoption,
they pretend she is still alive for anyone else who outside of the house.
The film is not foreboding and dark, but its subjects of
sexuality and incest are still very powerful, with Birkin doing his best to
handle the material. However, though he
makes his best efforts, the film does not break enough ground in dealing with
the material, no matter how maturely it is handled. Kubrick’s Lolita (1963) haunts the film somewhat too,
which is ironic as Cusack’s husband Jeremy Irons would be in the Adrian Lyne
remake not long after this film.
The full screen image is in color, but is problematic,
with grain and a haze throughout. The
color is not what it could be either, while definition is also an issue. The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is off of the
Dolby-A theatrical release and it sounds it.
It is on the weak side, though Dolby’s compression is making it even
lower sounding. Extras include a few
trailers (including for this film), filmographies, cast profiles, and a few
notes about how Birkin was dead set on getting this film made.
We are left with a film that does not go out of its way to
be exploitive or shocking, yet the material automatically is. It is not the kind of film that you would
see made in the U.S., much like the Lolita remake, especially the young
female and total male nudity of the pre-teens.
In the U.S., the self-censorship of the studios and their need to
distinguish themselves from the XXX industry is a big battle. Child exploitation is a big problem
everywhere, it seems especially sadistic (like so many other things), in the
U.S. and certain corners would try to label this child pornography by default,
but it is not. For one thing, this
could have been far more graphic, while Birkin and his cinematographer Stephen
Blackman do their best to forward the narrative through visuals. This leaves The Cement Garden an
especially challenging film that may not always work, but is effective when it
does.
- Nicholas Sheffo
