Word: melodrama
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...story is basically melodrama, but contains the seeds of something more complex. Dustin Hoffman plays David Sumner, an American mathematician who marries a stunning Cornwall lass (Susan George) and moves back to a farm in her hometown. It's primitive, this Cornwall; all the girls seem to have married out, and the only workers we see are farmhands and local craftsmen--aside from the minister, the sheriff, and the bartender...
...does Chabrol fall victim to melodrama in his direction. He gets impact from understatement and from two superb, low-key performances by Yanne and Audran (who is Mrs. Chabrol in private life). In Chabrol's treatment, the schoolmistress not only triggers the killer's dormant psychopathy but becomes a partner in his crime. Perversely, as he becomes more dangerous, she is all the more drawn to him. Finally, knife in hand, the crazed killer confronts her late at night in her apartment. It is only then, in a violent, weird, but somehow touching denouement, that the two finally...
There is plenty of that, and some melodrama, in Rabbit Redux, and the novel is every bit as complex as Updike's previous one. The politics are accurate, and interesting; Rabbit is a wavering hawk, his cagier father a sort-of populist, his used-carlot-owning in-laws, fashionably lib-rad. The changing landscape is vigorously perceived: the social differentiations between tract housing developments and more wooded lots, plastic hamburger stands moving ever-closer towards the heart of the old city. Dominant metaphors resonate with historical substance. As Rabbit journeys, the theater marquee goes from 2001 to TRUE GRIT...
...Russell's new version of The Boyfriend. For the rest, a striking number of film producers arc celebrating Christmas with a new wave of violence and bloodshed. Among the entries: Macbeth, Roman Polanski's first film since Rosemary's Baby; Dirty Harry, a tough police melodrama starring Clint Eastwood; and, once again, Sean Cannery as James Bond in Diamonds Are Forever. Here is a look at three of the season's most interesting films-and their directors...
Such ingredients are the stuff of melodrama; Peckinpah transforms them into the relentless geometry of fate. David returns home, finds Amy nearly hysterical in bed, but does not understand-or chooses to ignore-her veiled references to the attack. Instead, out of his own sense of humiliation, David fires...