Word: plot
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...over 27.9 people and killed 9.2 million. In its latest frightful exploit, AIDS has infected literature itself. Since stories whose main characters have AIDS end only one way--never happily--their writers are presented with the particularly difficult problem of turning the reader's attention away from the grim plot trajectory and toward the characters' development...
...notoriously dense novel and brings its melodramatic and erotic undertones to the forefront. A well-bred but impoverished English girl (Helena Bonham-Carter), secretly engaged to an equally impecunious journalist (Linus Roache), persuades her lover to pay court to a young American heiress dying of TB (Alison Elliott). The plot thickens as the three take a pleasure trip to Venice. The scenes in Italy are lovely, and the three stars give superb performances--especially Bonham-Carter, who brilliantly captures the complexities of her character...
...make up for the thinly drawn characters and lagging plot, director Les Mayfield keeps the flubber and the film moving at a thunderous pace. It almost seems like a filmed amusement park ride at times, a roller coaster of frenetic special effects that must hurdle the obstacles of a lifeless plot. Yet the pace is brisk enough to make up for any of the slow stretches--there's always the glimpse of another gooey dance scene in the near future...
...produce a play on this subject which is a memorable and lasting drama, it needs to be original. Not necessarily original in what it tries to purport, but original in the way it presents its theme. Forbidden Fruits offers a different stage set-up, but the dialogue and plot are too naive, simple and predictable to be memorable or meaningful...
...plot, shallow by itself, is further hampered by poor acting. Frohock is the only actor on the stage who does a creditable job, and all the others are too frequently trapped by memory lapses and forgotten lines. These slips occur far too often for even the most patient viewer to dismiss. The lines seem so unnatural to the actors at times that some actors start saying the lines--stop--then reword what they were saying, presumably to the way they were written. These errors eradicate whatever respect the play may have established with its audience--and that makes Forbidden Fruit...