Word: edlestein
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Loosely plotted and indifferently acted, Sally's Hounds succeeds because of Edlestein's skills at shooting and cutting film with evocative force. Concerned with evoking ideas as well as moods, Edelstein pictures complete characters rather than functional ciphers, and uses rather than imitates screen conventions. The movie offers a succession of extremely beautiful shots, but that beauty is focused into specific and meaningful chains of related imagery. He manages not only to realize his major characters and make their destructive interrelations both plausible and touching, but also to expose through visual analysis a contemporary emotional tendency as real...
...more of a low-level irritant than a dramatic advantage, and the occasional snippets of music seem too often either obvious or inappropriate. The actor's chief virtues are as objects rather than performers: Robin Woodard as Sally has an appropriately blank countenance, and a fascinating profile, which Edlestein uses repeatedly, often backlit, to suggest her mysterious vacuity; Hope Wilson as Kate is blessed with straightforward beauty and a rare up-from-under smile; Eric Sherman as John has a face which suggests a different value from every angle, by turns smug or harassed, depressed, or elated, dull or clever...
...Edlestein's directional gifts, however, are not limited to creating characterizations without actors. He has, in fact, an effective and highly developed personal style. Values are evoked early in the film in association with types of images and varieties of camera movement. Water (in pools, cascades, rivers, oceans) is continually associated with mystery and emotional confusion. It is a barrier, literally separating the characters, or figuratively suggesting their failures of insight. Wire fences, slats, and latticework also recur as a motif of division and isolation. Concrete architectural elements abound in certain sequences, carrying with them an implication of desolation...
Perhaps the most personal element of Edlestein's shooting style is his use of light to convey subtle moods. Especially impressive are the exterior sequences involving Sally and John, typically shot on the edge of overexposure, with a harsh, grainy film texture; the domestic interiors featuring John and Kate are richly and softly shadowed, a heavy dependence placed on natural light sources...
...Edlestein has also developed a highly original cutting style: in most of the important sequences, he tends to cut between shots which are related in sense and overall composition, but which do not develop directly out of each other with conventional, fluid continuity. He will frequently interrupt a functional cut with a brief emblematic or detail (memorable among such cuts is a phone conversation in which images of the two speakers are interspersed with rapid pans along fence-like telephone wires) and this liberated cutting style allows him to use disparate materials--still photographs, newspaper headlines, etc.--with ease...