Word: baxters
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...film about second sight: that means about another way of looking at things. From the first sinister zoom into the surface of a pond broken by drizzle, we are already captured by the sudden fracturing of the reflected image. In their cozy country house in England, John and Laura Baxter are working quietly when John suddenly breaks a piece of glass, cuts himself. Blood creeps like some blotted gargoyle over the face of a color slide--it shows the interior of a Venetian church he is restoring. Outside, their little girl has just drowned, and her red slicker is floating...
Manhattan Psychiatrist James Baxter argues that such roundabout reasoning is contradictory. Nevertheless, he says, the book is appealing because "a bedrock of respect for oneself is essential, and today we are rampant with self-recrimination. The U.S. is having a crisis of conscience unparalleled since the Civil...
Sutherland and Christie play a married couple, John and Laura Baxter, whose daughter has recently drowned in a pond on their country property. Leaving their surviving son in school, the Baxters depart for Venice, where John is restoring a 16th century church. The movie gives a compelling sense of the city not as a romantic tourist spot, but as a cold, purgatorial place, a labyrinth full of mute threat. It is, as one character describes it, "like a city in aspic at a dinner party where all the guests are dead and gone...
...Baxters meet two sisters, one of whom is blind and psychic. The sisters (well played by Hilary Mason and Clelia Matania) reassure the couple of the happiness of their dead daughter. But they sense danger, too. They tell Baxter that his life is in peril while he remains in Venice. He does not believe them, but he is bothered by strange presentiments, and by the persistent reappearance of a small figure in a hooded red raincoat-the garment his daughter was wearing when she drowned...
...actors look their parts perfectly--the sexy secretaries, the aging insurance salesmen. But they rely too much on their characterizations. Michael Ricardo's portrayal of Chuck Baxter has in both face and manner a beautifully apt combination of Superboy and kewpie doll. But this is carried no further than his face; as a result he creates a one-dimensional character. Ricardo deserves praise for being able to survive this demanding role--although he doesn't really build a great level of intensity that needs maintaining...