Death and the Maiden

Ariel Dorfman's hit stage play Death And The Maiden contains plenty of material in action, character and themes to make it an obvious choice for the director of Cul-De-Sac, Repulsion and Knife in The Water; with its three central characters in an isolated and enclosed area, a possibly neurotic, gun touting female playing sinister power games, and a slowly unwinding mystery.

In an anonymous South American country Paulina Escobar (Sigourney Weaver) prepares a meal for her husband Gerardo (Stuart Wilson) in their beach house. He is late. When he does arrive the electricity has been cut off, the phone lines are down and a storm is brewing. Gerardo has got a lift from a Dr Miranda (Ben Kingsley) whom Paulina instantly recognises as the man who tortured and raped her incessantly to the sound of Schubert's Death and the Maiden during the country's former military regime. She proceeds to put Miranda on trial at gun-point with Gerardo as his defence lawyer in order to extract a confession.

At times the film is too obviously based on the stage play, the script by Dorfman and Rafael Yglesias who wrote Fearless is too verbose in places and occasionally Polanski gets stuck with the shot-reverse shot format. Nevertheless Weaver and Kingsley both give blistering performances, Weaver especially despatches viscious lines laced with wit, and Kingsley is excellent as the weaselly, Nietzsche-quoting doctor. The dark menacing camera work of Tonino Delli Colli helps to create the right mood, and the film is full of moral niceties and character contradictions to keep the audience's brains mulling over.

Central to the play was the unanswered question of whether Miranda was actually guilty of the crimes of which he was accused; unfortunately Polanski answers that question, and while it rounds off the film it leaves the audience in effect with nothing to think about.

Review by Stephen Cox
Taken from EUFS Programme 1995-96