Nicolas Roeg’s “Dangerous Timing: A Sensual Obsession” (1980) is a superb film about terrible folks doing terrible issues to 1 one other.
If “Gone Lady” (each the novel or the 2014 David Fincher movie), crime documentaries or murder-themed podcasts are your factor, right here’s a poisoned masterpiece to observe together with your fingers partially masking your eyes whilst you yell on the display screen. It’s that type of a film.
You’ve been warned.
The scream of an ambulance siren and the sight of a girl being hauled away to the hospital introduces our important characters. The lady on the stretcher is Milena, performed by Theresa Russell. Her involved boyfriend who watches because the ambulance roars away is Alex, performed by Artwork Gurfunkel (sure, that Artwork Garfunkel).
The police officer investigating the case is Inspector Netusil (Harvey Keitel). The extra Alex confesses to the character of his relationship with Milena, the much less Netusil believes that her sudden overdose and suicide try are precisely what it appears.
Roeg was already a famous auteur, along with his wondrous “Walkabout” (1971), the extraordinary, scary “Don’t Look Now” (1973) and the stunningly totally different David Bowie automobile, “The Man Who Fell to Earth” (1976).
A key component of Roeg’s cinema is his skill with enhancing, as a few of Roeg’s finest movies use enhancing to both skewer time or create bridges between moments that occurred way back that linger within the reminiscence.
The usage of enhancing to determine the story of Alex and Milena, emphasize the escalating ardour and horror of their relationship and distinction the completely happy and horrid recollections is just superb. What might have been a messy, incomprehensible fusion of various scenes and stolen moments is made into an astonishing, tour de pressure instance of movie enhancing on the highest stage.
Along with Tony Lawson’s grasp stage of enhancing, there’s additionally good needle drops (“Who Are You” by The Who’s ideally utilized), excellent cinematography by Anthony B. Richmond, and a fearless, commanding flip by Russell.
The story is redundant and incessantly off placing, with the outbursts and terrible habits turning into downright numbing by the third act. As in “Don’t Look Now,” Roeg explores a relationship that’s practical on the skin, disintegrating on the within and is saved alive by bed room intimacy that serves as the one actual tenderness and shared belief between the couple.
Garfunkel made this after going solo from his huge success with Simon and Garfunkel. Whereas Garfunkel’s prior movie position in “Carnal Information” (1971) suggests a promising character actor, Garfunkel’s miscast main flip right here is, at finest, fascinating to observe however, at worst, a significant distraction.
Garfunkel’s dedication to enjoying such an unlikable creep will be efficient, although it has the potential to kill a need to take heed to his music ever once more.
I suppose I imply that as a praise.
Friday night viewing suggestion? On @criterionchannl, watch Nicolas Roeg’s BAD TIMING (1980)—a masterful, deeply disturbing foray into the darkish world of sexual obsession. https://t.co/2LFJYOwAPP pic.twitter.com/ql52JboQEM
— Criterion Assortment (@Criterion) July 12, 2024
In concept, Keitel could be ultimate enjoying a cop on the case however he appears as misplaced as Garfunkel. Apparently, Keitel would play this actual type of position much better a decade later in Alan Rudolph’s “Mortal Ideas” (1991).
“Dangerous Timing: A Sensual Obsession” is filled with arresting moments and so brilliantly assembled, it all the time dazzles as a technical achievement. As a melodrama, it’s an icky, discomforting movie. Roeg’s “Don’t Look Now” is preferable (if additionally robust going for newcomers), although this one is equally highly effective.
A perfect double function could be to pair this with Roeg’s “Monitor 29” (1988), which additionally stars Russell, has an unforgettable flip by Gary Oldman and is amongst Roeg’s most fully bonkers and interesting works.
Upon its preliminary launch 40 years in the past, Roeg’s movie prompted fairly a scandal: it was initially rated X and one movie critic infamously touted that it was “a sick movie, made by sickos.” Years later, it went out of print, earlier than The Criterion Assortment cleaned it up and re-released it.
Roeg arguably justifies the horror present shock reveal within the remaining stretch by giving us an ideal and completely satisfying closing scene. Enduring this a lot human wretchedness, even when offered so stylishly, is a matter of style.