She
is an entitled brat who is not nearly as worldly as she thinks she is. He is an
over-sexed, violence-obsessed man-child with a history of exploitative
relationships. By all means, lets get these two together, because what could
possibly go wrong? As we would expect, the outré art photographer will have a
disruptive effect on the household when he crashes for a few days in Jason
Saltiel’s Beach House (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.
Emma
wants to take yet another semester off to find her creative writing voice in
Berlin. Her long-time stepfather Henry takes her side against her mother
Catherine, because his strategy has always been to placate her. He has the
money to do it. After years of scuffling, Paul, her mother’s surprise
houseguest is also in the money. For some reason, the art world suddenly
decided his sexually provocative photo shoots are a good buy. His latest
published series is inspired by The Death
of Marat, but his most recent work are about two dozen Polaroids supposedly
riffing on Giallo horror movies—as in a pretty girl getting strangled by a
sinister pair of patent leather gloves.
Emma
is fascinated and perhaps excited by the suspiciously realistic-looking photos,
but she starts to become rather alarmed when she is unable to reach the model getting
throttled (to confirm she is indeed still alive). Yet, she is increasingly
perversely attracted to Paul, probably because it would really tick off her
mother.
Beach House is a weirdly
listless thriller, but that almost works because of it—almost. Emma and Paul
are like the Gate-Keeper and the Key-Master. No sane person would ever put them
together. However, we can nearly buy into the notion Catherine and Henry are
too groggy from sunstroke to think clearly. Still, at some point, they have to
snap out of it.
Willa
Fitzgerald is effectively Lolita-esque as Emma, while Murray Bartlett conveys a
dark, edgy magnetism as Paul. Orlagh Cassidy is also quite appealingly forceful
and comparatively down-to-earth as Catherine. Thomas M. Hammond always seems to
apologize for his very presence as Henry. (As an aside, the heavy beard he and
Paul both sport are weird distractions. Surely, they could find a few razors in
this tony beach front burg.)
