Long before David Lynch’s brilliantly subversive Blue Velvet (the trend-setting and utterly unforgettable intro of which you can see here) once again turned the suburban thriller genre on its (severed) ear, the idea of suburban disdain and despair bubbling under an all-too-idyllic surface had been done to death, and beyond. Most film goers will unrelentingly cite 1999's (has it been that long?) American Beauty, which kicked off a trend of dark-side-of-suburbia dramedies every bit as persistent as the slacker-hitmen permanently etched into public consciousness by Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction and the imitators that followed. Thumbsucker, The Chumscrubber, Little Children, the list goes on and on, with a few choice flicks bucking the trend and updating the already ambitious but admittedly dated template of Beauty.
So where does Dean O'Flaherty’s Beautiful fall on that scale of mostly tired indies? Unfortunately, the O'Flaherty-penned and directed film is a cluttered canvas splashed with beautiful images one after another, but failing to leave any memorable moments in mind long after an overblown, emotionally hollow and symbolically overwrought ending. That was a mouthful. In short, Beautiful is a film that consistently manages the trick of looking top notch, the visuals provided by cinematographer Kent Smith are elegant but rarely appropriately elegiac. O'Flaherty knows how to pen a scene filled with proper drama but is seemingly conflicted about the movie’s direction – for all that good looking on-screen sheen, the pacing is a major turn-off and a lack of a strong central performance deflates the film early on and never picks up for a lengthy 90-odd minutes.
This is a shame, because the film starts out with a haunting and intriguing premise. Sunshine Hills (hardy-har-har, says the screenwriter who schooled himself in basic filmic irony) has been plagued by the disappearance and gruesome butchering of several teenage girls. This shared history binds the suburb together, permanently connecting the inhabitants, who shutter their windows and lock their doors, guiding their children sternly indoors every night. O'Flaherty keeps the intro short and fills it with foreboding shots of relatively non-threatening objects. He sets up the suburb and its past history with the kind of skill found in short supply everywhere else in the film.
Enter dreamer and creeper photographer Danny (Sebastian Gregory), who snaps stills of sexually tantalizing older Suzy (Tahyna Tozzi). In the first scene introducing Suzy, she sunbathes in a bright red bathing suit while rain falls in slow motion around her. She seems to not only be aware of Danny’s borderline stalker-ish behavior but manages to pose for his camera, enjoying the teenager’s undivided and worshipful attention. O'Flaherty gives us a lengthy scene between the two of them as Suzy tempts Danny, but since the characters are barely introduced, much less developed, we don’t get much out of it.
Details soon follow – Danny is saddled with a tough-guy cop dad (Aaron Jeffery) who doesn’t understand him and a stepmother (the versatile Peta Wilson, trying for a dramatically satisfying role) whose self-focus makes for some awkward dinner-table conversation. Danny is a loner unabashedly obsessed with Suzy and when she invites him in and seduces s him, a mission is introduced – Danny must investigate the neighborhood, specifically house number 46. Suzy functions under the suspicion that the killer of the three young women still logs time in the neighborhood and Danny is her willing little detective, questing for Suzy’s affections as he slowly finds himself in more danger than he ever imagined.
I’ll leave it to you to see how things wind down but over the course of 90 minutes, most prototypical indie dramatic beats will be covered. There’s the strange sex, the failed marriage, the young lusty lady and the inexperienced young man, a possibility of a criminal history and that damn perfect suburbia, oozing with unforeseen and regretful consequences. Beautiful has all these things and in the last thirty minutes, the pacing picks up slightly and characters begins to sulk less and move more. Unfortunately, by that time, we are emotionally disconnected from the film so the drama that follows, no matter how highly pitched, falls flat with a vengeance.
DVD Bonus Features
The DVD includes a 15-minute behind the scenes look featuring interviews, about 10 minutes of deleted scenes and a theatrical trailer. Pretty decent for a film that probably doesn’t have much to say about its making-of.
"Beautiful" is on sale June 29, 2010 and is not rated. Crime-Thriller, Drama. Directed by Dean OFlaherty. Written by Dean O'Flaherty. Starring Aaron Jeffery, Peta Wilson, Sebastian Gregory, Tahyna Tozzi.
