Just shoot me

If it wasn't on the credits, I would have had trouble believing it. But there it was - "Director - Chen Kaige". That the renowned director of Yellow Earth and Farewell My Concubine should be at the helm of such an overripe and derivative film as Killing Me Softly beggars belief.

Based on Nicci French's novel, the film is in fact a slightly revised remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion (which starred Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine). Karen Lindstrom's laboured screenplay adds plenty of heaving bosoms and sculpted gluteal muscles into the mix of paranoia and murder. The result is an overly melodramatic film, filled with excruciatingly bad dialogue and increasingly preposterous twists. Perhaps its greatest problem though is that the biggest twist of them all is telegraphed so obviously, when the big "reveal" comes towards the end of the film, it's no surprise at all.

Heather Graham plays Alice, an American living in London. One day, on her way to work, she encounters a handsome mountaineer, Adam Tallis (Joseph Fiennes). Their chance meeting quickly turns into a torrid affair, and Alice leaves her boyfriend to be with Adam. She finds support from Adam's sister, Deborah (Natascha McElhone), who tells Alice that Adam hasn't gotten over the death of his former girlfriend in a climbing accident. That however doesn't faze Alice and she rushes headlong into marrying Adam. But soon after, Alice starts receiving anonymous notes questioning what she really knows about him. She begins to suspect that there may be more to Adam than meets the eye.

What brings Killing Me Softly undone is not so much an unflattering comparison to the far superior Suspicion, but that it sinks under the weight of its own insecurity. Not able to sustain even the modest 104 minutes running time, Kaige resorts to laborious sex scenes to try to liven things up a bit. When the "mystery" finally gets under way, it's approached without subtlety and, a few reasonable scenes aside, the film becomes an excuse for some unintended laughs as the characters struggle through the morass.

Killing Me Softly doesn't represent a career high point for either Graham or Fiennes, both of whom have shown that they're capable of better than this. Why Kaige has apparently insisted on his actors playing their roles with wooden expressions and an oh-so-serious demeanour is beyond me. McElhone too has done far better, although at least she has the defence that her role, though pivotal, is really quite small.

Killing Me Softly is the kind of lurid melodrama that gives porno movies a good name. Stiff, often ludicrous and badly acted, this is a real stinker. It may not be the worst film of the year - Tom Green is still working after all - but it's a crashing disappointment from one of Asia's best regarded filmmakers.

David Edwards