Experimental features sometimes seem like practical jokes, and that is often the case with filmmaker Lee Eubanks’s debut, which might most charitably be described as a misguided effort to replicate the mood of angst-ridden loneliness that Michelangelo Antonioni captured so memorably more than a half-century ago. After a prologue in which several couples crawl to a bed situated in what appears to be a field, an unnamed man and woman are introduced bickering poisonously in a motel room. They have apparently come to a seaside town to attend a funeral, but spend most of their time simply wandering around in a gloomy haze, bumping into odd characters, including an old woman who can abruptly go berserk. There are spasms of dialogue, but all of it is obstinately opaque, and many inexplicable moments, such as when an older man staggers around in a forest before collapsing, becoming naked, and groveling on the ground. The black-and-white camerawork periodically captures a striking image, but for the most part Eubanks’s film proves to be both a grim endurance test and a decidedly failed experiment. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)
It Takes From Within
First Run, 95 min., not rated, DVD: $24.99 Volume 33, Issue 3
It Takes From Within
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