India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) is suspicious of the people appearing and disappearing from her life in the creepy Stoker.
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Stoker
Starring Mia
Wasikowska, Nicole Kidman, Matthew Goode, Jacki Weaver and Dermot
Mulroney. Directed by Park Chan-wook. 98 minutes. Opens March 1 at the
Varsity. 14A
“Strange how people can just disappear on you,” the sheriff says in the gothic family drama Stoker, and the yokel speaks truth.
What happened to the
opinionated housekeeper, Mrs. Garrick (Phyllis Somerville)? Where did
Auntie Gin (Jacki Weaver) suddenly go — and didn’t she also have
something she wanted to say?
What were the
circumstances of the “accident nobody could have predicted” that claimed
the father (Dermot Mulroney) of young India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska)?
The tragedy cruelly occurred on India’s 18th birthday.
The missing list keeps growing, in this stylish chiller by celebrated South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook (Vengeance trilogy). The film plays like a Brian De Palma homage to Hitchcock — albeit one loaded with Park’s symbol-laden visuals.
More curious than the
MIA people, though, are the ones who suddenly hover into view. The
strangest of all being Uncle Charlie (a creepy Matthew Goode), not by
accident named for Joseph Cotton’s character in Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt, who possesses impeccable attire and manners and a smile like a cartoon crocodile.
Charlie
has
previously been absent from the lives of India and her fragile mother
Evelyn (an intense Nicole Kidman), but now he wants to be very much a
part of them. He moves into their southern estate (the film was shot
near Nashville), to the pleasure of the mother but the suspicion of the
daughter. What does Uncle Charlie really want?
Caught between these
comings and goings is young India, a puzzle clad in goth clothes and
saddle shoes, who seems to be communing with forces both natural and
unnatural.
India acts old beyond her years, but her story in Stoker is a coming-of-age one, the kind you could imagine Neil Gaiman
reading to his children. She speaks in voiceover about her “longing to
be rescued, to be completed,” yet she’s slow to allow other people into
her life or even to touch her.
It’s an excellent role
for Wasikowska, her blonde hair dyed black. She rises to the challenge
of a character who resists warmth, a departure from her usual innocence.
Stoker also
represents a life change for Park, who makes his English-language debut
after long winning raves from international genre fans for his precise
images and explicit violence, best known for his payback trio that began
with Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance in 2002.
He actually seems to be enjoying himself with Stoker,
although his idea of family fun is more Manson than Disney. Park
equates sex with danger and knowledge with dark things, and he suggests
that evil can be passed along blood lines — and so can a thirst for
retribution.
Nobody does quite what
you expect they will and actions have unexpected reactions, usually
visceral ones. There are also moments of strange beauty, as when India
brushes her mother’s long red hair and it turns into a field of waving
grass.
And don’t blink when
India goes downstairs to get ice cream from the freezer, at Uncle
Charlie’s request. You never know what you’re going to see in a movie
this fraught with detail and dread.
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