CLOSET LAND

By Molly Haskell

(Video Review, October 1991)

Closet Land

Alan Rickman. Madeleine Stowe. Directed by Radha Bharadwaj. 1991

This chamber play literally, as it all takes place in a prisonlike chamber is a denunciation of political torture, in the form of a duet between an interrogator (an all-powerful male) and a woman who has been arrested for the allegedly subversive characters who appear in her children's books.

Far more interesting than the political allegory is the way torturer and victim replay archetypical male-female roles of sexual abuser and abused. If the tale is oppressively one-sided, the acting is not: Rickman and Stowe are two extraordinary talents, both fascinating; as they alternate between strength and vulnerability. In the rich variety of performances that combine the sensual and the cerebral, they counter the somewhat schematic nature of the political parable.

The closet land of the title refers to the closet where the young woman played as a child mentally turning coats into colorful, friendly animals to escape the horrible of the sexual abuse she experienced. But the closet was also the setting for the abuse - by her mother's lover when the child was five. That early experience has also driven the woman toward a form of creative expression - which, because it eludes the grip of the ruling order is triumphantly subversive. It has given her the mental strength to conquer reality by imagining herself elsewhere.

Some reviewers jumped on the movie during its theatrical release for its pretentiousness, and there is a certain heavy-handed theatricality in the set and some of the dialogue But writer-director Bharadwaj shows daring and insight as a first-time moviemaker. And ultimately the powerful dynamics of the male-female duel and the performances of two exciting new talents make this an experience an well worth the adventurous video viewer's attention.

 

 

 

 

Originally on KelClancy's Page