Starring Kelly Reilly, Miranda Richardson. Written by Dan Weldon. Directed by Nicolas Roeg. (18A) 116 min. Opens Sep 28.
The excitement of seeing a new film by Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now, The Man Who Fell to Earth) carries one through the first 30 minutes or so of Puffball,
his first film in 11 years. There's an off-kilter thrill to the
compositions, and the basic scenario – a pretty young architect, Liffey
(Kelly Reilly), incurs the voodoo-tinged wrath of her neighbours while
renovating a cottage in rural Ireland – seems in line with the
director's art-spook leanings. There's space carved for Roeg's usual
virtuoso carnality, starting with an outdoor sex scene between Liffey
and her boyfriend that culminates in the kind of money shot rarely seen
outside of health class.
It's a show-stopping moment, and the sudden, literal shift to
the interior anticipates the biological concerns of the script (by Dan
Weldon, adapting his mother Fay's novel): an examination of the impact
of pregnancy on an isolated, mostly female community. It also heralds
the film's collapse into silliness. Roeg labours to italicize key
images (i.e., a very large rock with a very suggestive hole), but loses
his grip on the story. We're slowly bludgeoned by disastrous musical
cues, crazed performances, turgid eroticism and loudly over-stated
themes. Eventually and exhaustingly, every scene takes on an air of
hysteria.
“My brain feels like porridge,” sighs one character late in
the game, and it's easy enough to identify with her distress. It's also
easy to laugh at Puffball's reckless, Skinemax-vintage
excesses. What's harder – and necessary – is to acknowledge that only a
true and uncompromising artist could ever make such a vivid mess.