[.ca] A River Made to Drown In

Love, sex and death in the 90's:
For reasons unknown to me, director James Merendino signed this film as Allen Smithee, a usual sign of discomfort with the final product, or meaning a clash between producers and director. Although producer Jon Powell appears twice in an important role, it is still strange because `River Made To Drown In' is a very good film that in its own way conveys the same feeling of despair and love for youth-as-art found in `Death in Venice' but in the 90s. Written by Paul Marius (who plays the owner of a sex club), it is a perceptive look at the relationship between young male prostitutes and their much older clients (`johns'). These are usually men beyond their 60s who still seek quick and impersonal sex among young guys who could care less for their old-age anguish. Richard Chamberlain plays Thaddeus MacKenzie, an old lawyer with AIDS, who wants to spend his last days with the only two persons he loved, two young hustlers. Allen Hayden (Michael Imperioli) has changed his life style and has become an artist. He is having an affair with Eva (Ute Lemper), a wealthy gallery owner who knows nothing about his past. The other one is even younger, Jaime (James Duval), the son of an ex model and a Buddhist monk, who wants to raise enough money to go visit his father. It is interesting that a young man like Marius, has come with an incisive story and some keen dialogues that could have been written by someone older and perhaps `wiser'. What makes the Allen Smithee credit more intriguing is that Merendino is a filmmaker with real talent for directing actors, for composition, and with a good eye for expressing the inherent affective dislocation of the story. He receives good help from cinematographer Thomas Callaway, whose angles, use of cranes, hand-held camera or play with depth of field, convey the distortion of these people's lives. On the other hand, editor Esther P. Russell has made a very good job to suggest the fragmentation of the daily experience of these persons. Her cross-cutting between different scenes transforms dialogues to an extent that they have greater meaning because of her editing: take, for example, the dialogue between Thaddeus and Eva on a bench, while both Allen and Jaime are involved in different places, in unpleasant situations with clients. There is no place for silly sentimentality or gratuitous sex scenes here (unless they have been cut), although the story is about love and sex between men: it is an almost heartless film, as most of the characters are. But even then, Merendino and Marius show real affection for these people, and have made a very rewarding and intelligent feature on the hustler scene.

Wonderful:
Very well done. Loved every minute of it. However it is a matter of taste as to whether on not you will like it. More than one of the characters really hit home with me. Certainly much better than many of the movies out there which are full of the same old boring young straight predicable characters.

The Absolute Worst!!!:
The pits! Cast as dying attorney in the final throes of AIDS, a way-over-the-top Richard Chamberlain decides to use his last days to make peace (so to speak) with two young male hustlers whom he'd hired ten years earlier. (Never mind that the younger of the two would have been a child at the time!) Needless to say, neither of the hustlers is particularly eager to see this former client agent--and who can blame them? As portrayed by Chamberlain, this annoying old queen (supposedly a top lawyer!) would give Truman Capote a run for his money in the flamboyance department. Talky, with little action, this truly awful movie seems like a feature-length death watch that seems to go on forever. And when Chamberlain finally does expire, the movie takes a turn for the weird, treating audiences to a softcore post-death epilogue--a fast montage of the two hustlers (one of whom has been retired for years) plying their trade in group sex interludes with variety of skanky old geezers. HUH??? (If this sounds interesting, it isn't). No wonder director James Merendino (hiding here under the name "Alan Smithee," a pseudonym synonymous for screen stinkeroos) demanded to have his name removed from the film. If the cast was smart, they'd have demanded the same privilege--and insisted upon having their images digitally erased, to boot.

THIS MOVIE IS AWFUL!:
I rented this movie on .99 cents night and it wasn't worth it. It wasn't worth the drive to the video store. Ugh!

Beyond Dreadful!!!!:
I blindly picked up this turkey (without knowing anything about it) from the used rack of a Blockbuster store several months ago. I brought the DVD home and proceeded to get information on it via the internet. Amazon was my first stop and I must admit to nearly crying after reading the terrible reviews of others who had already seen the film - I hate casting money to the wind!!! But, I decided to watch the film anyway and form my own opinion about its quality. Well, this has to be one of the worst scripted, worst edited, worst scored and most poorly acted horrors I've ever seen. Richard Chamberlain's acting was so bad that I couldn't help wonder if he had taken laxatives throughout the production and was overacting because he really, really had to get to a bathroom!! He was abyssmal!! I recommend you rent this dreadful film if you're really intent on seeing it. Please, please don't waste your money buying it.