• REVIEWS • scenes, while our hero, who cannot the ingenue's mother, who, as house­ Eric Till's swim, is almost drowned. keeper of the evil Tree brothers, is Don Carmody's Eric meets the ingenue, Melissa IChar­ mistress to both, and rendered helpless lene Senuik) while she is collecting to protect her nubile, and presumably Gentle Sinners money for the evil Tree brothers. Direc­ virginal, d aughter from their lecherous The Surrogate tor Eric Till gets the most out of these advances. young actors, evoking with the shimmer Okay, enough, the heroine did have to of an impressionist painting the be in some terrible danger or the hero's evanescent quality of adolescent sum­ efforts to save her would not have been m ers of first love. so grand or passionate. Still, she did One is not especially predisposed to like The climax of the film has all the have her own strategy for escape, and In spite of its terminally rotten script this film : another adolescent coming of magic, passion and dread of Tom might have succeeded had she not fallen and direction, The Surrogate has some­ age that takes place in another small Sawyer and Huck Finn. Dire threats for Eric. So we come back to the bother­ thing rare and valuable to offer the community in the Canadian bush. And arise for boy, man, and nature, plus our some wimpification of the female prin­ discerning moviegoer : dramatically yet, as soon as we get past the bible­ hero gets to rescue his "maide n fair." cipal. functional, integrated and central-to­ thumping ignominy of the caricatural And in case we missed the allusion, the For ,all that, there shouldn't be a dry the-storyline sex. parents (played in living two-dimension writer does throw Huck, in book form, at eye in front of the set when this film is Now, in the unabashed stroke movies by Jackie Burroughs and Kenneth Pogue, us more than once. screened on CBC Jan. 6. Despite its - Candy, The Story of 0 - the sex is not their fault one suspects), the film Gentle Sinners is such a work of art, a flaws, it is truly worth viewing. certainly necessary, there'd be no movie quite unabashedly seduces. The opening story worthy of telling and a Canadian without it, but it's not what you'd call scene has Eric (known as Bobby by his film which transcends in many impor­ Anna Fuerstenberg. "dramatically functional," not when the parents, and played beautifully by Chris­ tant ways the simple genre piece it drama is either perfunctory or totally topher Earlel scammed out of his money could have succumbed to being; the absent, the young-woman's-sexual­ and every stit€h of clothing off his UI;­ Cinematography is frame-for-frame odyssey storyline being a narrative GENTLE SINNERS d. Eric Till exec. p ./p . tanned vulnerable hide. The shot of a most exquiSitely executed, and the Pete r Ke lly assoc. p. Flora Macdona ld a.d. Tony rather than dramatic construction. In youngster trying to literally find his direction is almost flawless. And yet.. Thatc he r2nd a.d. Mike Williams sc. Ed Thomason, the ordinary dramatic movie - Coming trousers while thumbing rides on the again there are these nits which should based on the novel by W.O. Valgardson p. asst. Home, Body Heat - it is not sex that open road as the sun is coming up is not be overlooked, if only because they Roma n Stoyko unit man. (Tor.) Gail Eina rson­ functions, but desire (with or without McCleery unit man (Wpg.) Alix Washchyshyn both moving and hilarious, and sets the were not necessary. The women in this cont. Kath" y n Bu ck p. sec. De borah Osborne des. fulfillment) and its consequences. The tone for this quite delightful produc­ tale, most likely based on "true" or coord. Bo b Powe rs d.o.p. Ke nne th Gre ggcam. op. sex scenes have value only as statements tion. "real" ones, are, without exception, Michael Storey cam. asst. John Maxwell lighting of fact : they did it and the earth moved, Eric' s classic search for the father whores, witches and wimps. Ed Thom­ Erik Kriste nsen light. assts. Len Warier, Keith or, they did it and it shows their marriage Je nkins, J o hn W.iJ s on sd. Erik Hope boom Chris culminates in his finding the wonderful ason is a writer of such apparent and Davies art d. Milt Pa rche r des. (Wpg.) Stan Langll')' is boring. Apart from rape scenes land Uncle Sigfus, his Icelandic bach elor rich talent, that sure ly h e could have des. asSL (Tor.) Ca therine Baseraba des. d. (Wpg.) without going into the question of uncle, who shares the duties of avun­ avoided the obvious, the ch eap thrill of Robert Lowe grafix John Simons set dec. Peter whether they do, or do not, constitute cular confident with his friend Sam. Ed creating anothel- brazen buxom lass, Razmofsky. Mi chae l Ha ppy, Bill Chody cost. Betty sex scenesl, sex which delineates and Daw son. Mi chae l Ha rr is. Ruth Secord cost. (Wpg.) McNama ra as the former and George smothering mother, h e lpless house­ Gl o ria T a llma n. Te d Patte rson make-up Mario develops character, furthers the plot e lutesi as Sam give the most h eart­ keep er, or golly-gee ingenue who must Cacio ppo make-up asst. Ba rb Zaporzan hair Phil and is, itself, dramatic (that is, filled w re nching and understated perfor­ be booked and bedde d before the finale. Be nson staging Ra lph Ma cDonald. Robert Wytka. with conflict, crisis and resolution I is a mances, beautiful and totally believable, The re is so much humour a nd compas­ De rek Loomes. T.B.A. IWpg.1 painter Randy Chod a k rarity. In Canadian film, only James sp. efx. Do ug Wa rdle des. sked. (Wpg.) Weiland so c lear a nd e legant one simpl\' e nvies sion and sincel-ity in this stor)" based on Jennings carpenfers Dave Mac k/iog, Gerry Filby Woods' scenes with De bby Harry in the seamless qua lity of the acting. the Valgardson nove l, that one is stunned cast. Dorothy Ga,·dner . Mich e ll e Metivier post. p. Videodrome come readily to mind. T h e plot plots its way through finding by such lapses. Toni Wra te film e d . Ra lph Brunjes lab IWpg.) Mid Entire movies built on and worked out ve nue to support the errant nephew, as Jackie Burroughs plays without a hitch Can La bs p. coord. La urie Coo k unit pub. Sa il)' in terms of explicit sexual conflict (again Swank coffee Kim Forrest I.p. Chris topher Earle. he h as fo rfe it ed his work in lumber bv the fundamentalist mama, so why must Charlen e Se niuk, Ed M cNamara, Todd Stewart , excluding rape I are almost unknown. alie nating the town grotesques, the evil w e have her go quite over the edge as a Jacki e BUI'l'ough s. h: enneth Pogue, Neil Bennett , Currently, we have Ken Russell's Crimes TI-ee bl'Others. Sigfus and Sam ta ke Eri c complete witch ? The slut in the team of John C urtis. Fr ank Ada m so n , George C lules i , Ben­ of Passion, before that The Stud (with ja mi n D ar vill, Je:-, sica Stee n , Jeff Hirschfie ld , Cathi trawling for fi sh a nd director of photo­ hitchhikers is not parti c ul a rl~ ' offensive Joan Collins, from her sister's nove l) Allen , Joan ne A llen , Don Emms, Ralph A lmon d , graphy Kenneth Gregg gets some extra­ - in fa ct s he is beautiful reali zed - only Clare nce Fran klin, Joe T e nhart, Gudmunder Peter ­ and possibly Lolita, and the films of ordinary m o m e nts out of the lake this sluttishness is a the m e amplified by so n p.c. Ca nadian Broad clI s ling Corp. Russ Meyer. Then the idea starts getting dilute d - Shivers might be included, but there are those parasites. Ther e is, of course, a perfectly good reason for the scarcity of good (or even badl sexual drama, apart from the impositions of self-, public- and govern­ mental censorship, and that is that sex require s consent and co-operation, but drama requires conflict. The premise for The Surrogate pro­ vides a fine arena for sex-with-contlict : Frank Waite (Art Hindle), an upper middle-class car-dealer, has an impo­ tence problem and so much rage that he has blackouts from time to time, both of which h e blames on his wife's frigidity­ they haven' t made love in a year. The wife, Lee (Shannon Tweed), does seem co ld and hostile, but that could just be her r esponse to life with Frank. We do know that she likes to masturbate in the bath and that she says she's willing to make it any time he can get it up, so we think she can't be all that frigid. Our sympathies, not high for either one, are balanced between them. The drama starts when Frank's psy­ chiatrist suggests the couple hire sex surrogate Anouk Ven Derlin (Carole Laure). She' ll get you fucking again, through deeds not words, says the shrink, but warns that her treatments qan be monumentally weird.