Dead Trees
(2012/Cinema Epoch DVD) + The Dark Side
Of Love (1985/One 7/CAV DVD)
Picture:
D/C Sound: D/C+ Extras: D Main Programs: C/C-
In Chheng
Huy’s Dark Trees (2012), what
happens when a man is caught between his current girlfriend and his ex high
school crush? As Daniel goes about his
work, school and friends he just so happens to keep running into his old flame.
He keeps getting flashbacks of the past
and wonders if there is still something there. As he rekindles his memories of her so does
his desire to be with her once more... but even after all these years, does a
person stay the same... much less live the past?
A love
story of born of high school innocence, when Daniel has a series of chance
encounters with his old girl friend he feels like fate is giving him a second
chance. Despite he currently has a
girlfriend, and his family and friends both warn him that people change and no
one stays the same, Daniel continues to believe he must ask her out or regrets
the rest of his life, even if it turns his life upside down or him losing
everything.
This was
a fictional love story drama, a young film writer who becomes obsessed with his
past. It seems happenstance that he
keeps on running into his ex, each time triggering a past memory. As if saying/proving life isn't so easy, and
reality is harsher than movies and people can never change back once they are
gone. His feelings are like the title, a
"Dead Trees", though all of the leaves have fallen, BUT the tree is
still alive on the inside. The script
tries to examine this, but only gets limited results.
Even more
challenging is Salvatore Samperi’s The
Dark Side Of Love, about a young male hypochondriac who enjoys XXX films
and videos and his very successful sister, who is in the real world as a
businesswoman and how they start to become involved in sexual ways. He is “in love” with her and she decides to
get involved in the worst ways with bizarre results.
Apparently,
the makers (and especially Samperi) are trying to attack The Catholic Church
and Middle to Upper Class society and that may seem bold, but the film drifts
off into scenes that have nothing to do with apparent critiques of Italian
Fascism rising again or having never gone away and never makes the big
statement like a Pasolini film, et al.
That also
means it trivializes a serious subject (I never totally believed the actors as
relatives) and by 1985, what more could be said on the political subjects? This is a cold film, but in a boring way, not
a Kubrickian or Antonioni-like way. You
can see it yourself and it should not be censored, but I just did not think it
worked.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image is very, very weak on Trees, while the anamorphically
enhanced 1.85 X 1 image on Dark has
good color range, but is much softer throughout than expected. Both discs also have lossy Dolby Digital 2.0
Sound with Trees offering stereo so
weak it mighty as well be monophonic and is not very well recorded, while Dark has actual 2.0 Mono in badly
dubbed English and better Italian that is better, even for its age.
Neither
release offers any extras.
- Ricky Chiang & Nicholas Sheffo
