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Category:    Home > Reviews > Drama > Gay > Eden's Curve

Eden’s Curve

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: D     Main Program: C

 

 

Set in 1972, Eden’s Curve (2003) tells the tale of Peter (Sam Levine), who leaves for a college in a place called Eden (he’s blonde and sunbathes nude in the beginning on the roof, but Peter was a better name than Adam? Calling Dr. Freud!) and finds himself in homosexual relationships.  His parents do not know this and he is unaware of the already existing conflict at the school where the era of free sex and drugs complicates matters more.  Unfortunately for us, this interesting situation is rendered predictable and problematic when it could have been about something more significant.

 

Anne Misawa is the director, videographer and writer of this project, and she brings in some odd problems.  For one thing, all the guys cast who are going to be interested in each other are too “pretty” to make this a believable situation, except for the intellectual junkie, who is not ugly, but looks real versus like a model.  The few women are looking good, but do not always get lit as well.  Also, in trying to capture the early 1970s, she is clueless about what this era was really about.  This never looks or feels like the era and being shot on a newer videotape format is no excuse.  She also does some very obnoxious things to be clever and they backfire badly.

 

It is in the way she tapes the nudity and eroticism.  Of course, this does not need to be hardcore and it is not, but she films surfaces to look like other surfaces in one series of teases to the audience, then films full nudity either form a great distance or cut-up when the camera gets closer.  What gives?  Why he self-censorship and mockery of the audience?  It cannot be the lack of definition that her video format would offer of nude males and females.  It is certainly the antithesis of the era and shows some real personal issues with people and the body in general.  By the time the program runs its course, we are told that this was based on a true story, more than ever these days a sorry excuse to cover up for artistic failure.

 

She said this was about friends she knew.  Well, this is no way to honor their memory, especially with this visual Neo-Conservative self-censorship straight out of the 1980s and is the dream of police states all over the world.  There is no boldness or guts here.  Except for some good performances, Eden’s Curve does not make the grade, feeling more like a sexually oppressed exploitation film (like May Morning) than something we can appreciate.

 

The letterboxed 1.78 X 1 image was with a Sony PD-150 PAL camcorder and it shows.  The PAL format has about the same frame rate as sound film (25 vs. 24 frames-per-second), but it still has PAL’s limits and is presented here directly from a PAL source, not a film print.  Anamorphic enhancement would not improve anything either.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is basic at best and offers no surround information.  There are no extras, but enough was enough.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


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