Film Reviews

Forty Shades of Blue

• Rating:
• Director: Ira Sachs
• Starring: Darren E. Burrows
• Details: US, 108mins, 15.

Alan James (Torn) is a wealthy music producer who still lives the rock and roll lifestyle despite nearing his 60s. He still enjoys a spliff, a hard night on the tiles and the beds of any up and coming singers he happens to woo. This proves too much for his beautiful but troubled Russian girlfriend Laura (Korzun) as Alan's unfaithfulness plunges her into a deep depression. When Alan's estranged son Michael (Burrows) comes to visit, it awakens feelings in Laura she thought long dead as the pair contemplate an affair.
Director Sachs ditches any phoniness and opts for gritty realism in this peek into a family on the verge of implosion. However, Sachs went too far. We all know that day to day life is as boring as a dog's ass so why would we want to pay good money to watch it on the screen? To say not a lot happens in Forty Shades Of Blue is an understatement as Sachs's overlong scenes of silence and inactivity bore rather than excite. So that leaves us with the performances - can they hold together the wafer thin story? Torn is as great as ever as the unlikeable, uncaring father and partner, and Korzun, whose story this really is, convinces as the lonely woman in a strange land. However, there are only so many times Sachs can hold a shot on a melancholic face or a moody stare into nothing before the audience falls asleep. Sachs was obviously exorcising some ghosts here but he could have made it more interesting for us

Review by Gavin Burke