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Product Detail |
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Audio Format: DD 5.1, DD 2.0
Video Format: Widescreen 1.85:1 (Anamorphic)
Languages: French
Subtitles: English, Korean
Region Code: ALL
Year Made: 2005
Running Time: 114
Release Date: 11/09/2007
Although ravishingly lensed, a steamy story runs out of steam in "The Ring Finger," a fetching, Euro-set adaptation of a Japanese novel. Almost worth the price of admission for lovely newcomer Olga Kurylenko, front and center as a factory worker who takes a very peculiar desk job after her finger is nearly severed, pic shows enormous promise in the first few reels but treads water way too much after that. Film sank on local release in June but has enough spark (and sex) for some fest action.
After 21-year-old Iris (the effortlessly radiant Kurylenko) nearly loses her digit on a bottling assembly line, she stumbles into a position as receptionist and very personal secretary to a man (Marc Barbe) who transforms customers' mementos into "specimens." These are sometimes afloat in formaldehyde, sometimes sealed in a beaker as if ready for display in an old-fashioned museum. When her employer requires Iris to wear red high-heeled pumps, an already odd job gets even stranger. Adapter-helmer Diane Bertrand utilizes exquisitely-lit locations -- Hamburg's industrial waterfront figures prominently -- with skill, but the narrative feels embalmed long before it ends.
A consistent, unspoken longing, a severed ring finger and obsessive sex form the celluloid microcosm that is "L'annulaire," a film so caught up in fine-tuning its very particular moods and nuances that the story is almost beside the point. Strangely, the viewer is OK with that, if only because the central character, Iris (played by former runway model Olga Kurylenko) -- a 21-year old factory worker turned laboratory assistant -- is so ravishing that all sensory perceptions become entrenched in a languid stupor of sheer appreciation. Though Iris never says or does very much, her mere presence in the frame was apparently enough for filmmaker Diane Bertrand, whose gaze upon her is charged with a sublime eroticism, and, accordingly, enshrouds Iris in one of the softest, most translucent lighting schemes in recent cinema. Confronted by such visuals, does one really need a coherent and believable story? The answer, almost, is "not really."
"L'annulaire" is full of such snippets of poetry, both in the story and the characters, but they remain just that -- snippets -- whose net sum doesn't amount to a whole lot of personality portrayal. Iris, though wonderful to look at, is devoid of depth, apart from a constant pining for her missing finger. The dock worker is silent and constantly dragging on cigarettes. As for the scientist, he seems to have no other function apart from an urgent desire for Iris, which, in turn, triggers her own obsession for this man, who, when they first make love, first strips her completely but leaves his own lab coat on.
This film is based on the novel by Yoko Ogawa, whose works are defined by murky, dreamy sexual obsessions that the heroine may or may not act upon. Director Bertrand faithfully re-enacts the dreaminess and the insulated, slightly clammy texture of the original story. Bertrand hints that all this could, in fact, just be some girlish daydream concocted by Iris to console herself. On the other hand, it's just the kind of fantasy scenario in which a middle-aged scientist would choose to indulge his jaded intellect. (A dark-haired beauty comes knocking on his lab door one morning, says very little and agrees to do everything he says. Niiice.) Time seems to fuel rather than dampen his ardor; initially distant and manipulative in the seduction process, he thaws enough to undress in front of Iris, and when they lie together on hard bathroom tiles (where they are in the habit of frequenting during work hours), he cradles her body so that she won't get tile marks on her back.
Special Features
- Interview with Director
- Interview with Writer
- Trailer
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