jadavix "Deep in the Woods" is presented entirely through short, fleeting scenes, giving the initial impression that you are watching a trailer of the movie, rather than the movie itself. Once you overcome this feeling, you settle in to watch a movie that you know isn't going to be generous in its exposition, so you'd better pay attention to these short scenes.The movie is about a mysterious tramp who enters the house of a 19th century French doctor and his beautiful daughter, played by Isild le Besco. He does magic tricks with the cutlery, and soon reveals a psychic hold over the daughter, Josephine, seemingly able to make her sick and well at his command. He also takes a strong sexual interest in her.Eventually they escape, her apparently under his spell, and submitting, perhaps not willingly, to frequent bouts of unerotic sex. After a while, she seems to change her mind in regards to this ugly, monobrow'd vagabond, and in a late sex scene where Josephine is on top, it feels like a vital turning point in their relationship.Nevertheless, the vagabond is captured and Josephine returned to her life at home. She has a baby. Is it Tomothee, the vagabond's? We don't get to find out.The aforenamed short scenes, combined with typically opaque performances from the leads, and obscure dialogue, keep us at a pretty safe distance from this one. When a police officer says, late in the movie, that a court case is no place for poems, but for the straight truth, we know how he feels. The movie is, ultimately, too lightweight to be engaging, and too distancing to make us much bother with puzzling over its mysteries.

Bob Taylor It's like a Millet painting; you know, The Angelus or something, a bunch of decrepit peasants tilling the field, misery written on their faces. The French highlands provide a stunning backdrop for all this misery. The sex that takes place between the two leads shouldn't distract us from the almost medieval poverty and desperation these people experience.Isild le Besco has now made five films with Benoit Jacquot; she's established a solid working relationship with him. I enjoyed the Sade film, and the crime story that crosses several countries (A tout de suite}. I wish they would make a more traditional story next time.

lazarillo This is a story set in 19th century France of a poor and seemingly simple-minded vagrant who tricks his way into a prominent do-gooders house by pretending to be a deaf mute in order to bewitch and rape his virginal daughter (Isild Le Besco). After he deflowers her, she ends up following him "deep into the woods", but is unclear if she does so willingly or because he has some strange power over her. . .It's hard to agree with most of the criticisms of this movie. It is a very ambiguous film, but it is an intriguing ambiguity rather than a frustrating ambiguity and vastly preferable at any rate to the usual Hollywood tendency of hitting the audience over the head with every blunted plot point. The idea of a woman coming to sympathize with her rapist is pretty "politically incorrect", but there is such a thing as Stockholm Syndrome, and you also have to reckon with the fact that this was set in the 19th century where women's sexuality was kept so deeply repressed that it's not hard to imagine they might fall under the hysterical sway of any man who releases it (or merely use him as an excuse to their explore own repressed sexual desires). A goodly portion of the movie does involve little but the two characters wandering around the French countryside and having sex. But I don't really find the natural beauty of the French countryside boring, and I certainly don't find the natural beauty of Le Besco's incredible body the least bit boring.Isilde Le Besco is really quite an amazing actress. There is no Anglophone actress of her talent that would take on the heavily sexual and constantly undraped roles that she does (the only possible exception being Kate Winslet). She is not conventionally pretty, but she is unconventionally beautiful, and like Kate Winslet I'm sure the crazies (who consider anorexia sexy) might call her "fat", but she is really just a naturally voluptuous young woman, and I think everybody has just forgotten what one looks like after being exposed to all these walking skeletons with fake breasts. The actor playing the vagrant "Timothee" I've never seen before or since, but he is certainly effective in this role and he does have a diminutive Rasputin-like charm to him.This movie is available with English subtitles, but it has never been released in America. Still if you get a chance, it's definitely worth checking out.

team-26 Saw this one at the British Film Festival last night (22nd October). It seemed to me to be a film without redeeming features. The plot-line was exiguous and (such as it was) moved forward at a snail-like pace. There were no attractive characters (either physically or morally) other than perhaps the father. No explanation was proffered either for why the girl fell under the spell of the feral boy or (if she did fall under his spell), why she spent so much time screaming?That being said, if you like films where a not-very-attractive woman with a wobbly bottom and an inadequate personality gets raped by a crafty peasant with slimy grey teeth and a moustache that looks like a furry centipede, then this is the film for you.We just about stomached the rape, but when the crafty peasant started slurpy cunnilingus as if he was eating soup without a spoon, we walked out. I suspect the leading lady wished she could have walked out too . . .Bad film. Avoid.