Creepy doll movies aren't really my thing. I like Chucky, but that's mainly because Brad Dourif sounds like the love child of Jack Nicholson and Tom Waits. In general though, I'm not a doll kinda guy. I do enjoy the occasional bad movie however, so it was with that special mixture of trepidation and excitement that I pressed play on Marronnier.
The film opens with a young woman being kidnapped, dragged into a van and sliced up with piano wire. Then it flips to some strange cutesy date that ends with the girl turning into a lifesize doll, much to the dude's dismay. Then there's some fast-motion teeth brushing. 5 minutes in and I don't have a damn clue what's going on, but it's already loaded with ludicrous overacting, bad SFX and totally unnecessary slo-mo and fast-mo. Oh yeah! That's the stuff! Eventually we find out some semblance of a plot which makes as much sense as explaining the colour blue to a blind man by speaking sign language to his guide dog. It's got something to do with a guy who makes a doll from his lover's corpse, then starts making more dolls using an eerie pink iron lung, a sewing machine and pond water. There's other stuff going on too (including MORE sped up tooth brushing!!! Yay!!) but I didn't much care to follow the story too closely. It's complete nonsense obviously, but still it's hard to criticise a movie too harshly when it gives us a random battle-axe vs. sledgehammer duel.
Keeping in line with the tone of the piece is the amazing musical score, which seems to have been composed by an attention deficit 8 year old screwing around with the programmed tracks on an old Casio keyboard. Often the music will change from eerie noise to seductive jazz to chintzy bubblegum pop, all within the space of a minute, with NOT ONE of the styles being appropriate to what's happening on screen. There's a fine line between madness and genius and, for the makers of Marronnier, that line is called the horizon.
I'll finish this review with a question: Are you barber? No. You are not barber. If you want to find out who is barber and why, then you'll have to watch Marronnier. The answer will astound you. Or possibly bore you
The film opens with a young woman being kidnapped, dragged into a van and sliced up with piano wire. Then it flips to some strange cutesy date that ends with the girl turning into a lifesize doll, much to the dude's dismay. Then there's some fast-motion teeth brushing. 5 minutes in and I don't have a damn clue what's going on, but it's already loaded with ludicrous overacting, bad SFX and totally unnecessary slo-mo and fast-mo. Oh yeah! That's the stuff! Eventually we find out some semblance of a plot which makes as much sense as explaining the colour blue to a blind man by speaking sign language to his guide dog. It's got something to do with a guy who makes a doll from his lover's corpse, then starts making more dolls using an eerie pink iron lung, a sewing machine and pond water. There's other stuff going on too (including MORE sped up tooth brushing!!! Yay!!) but I didn't much care to follow the story too closely. It's complete nonsense obviously, but still it's hard to criticise a movie too harshly when it gives us a random battle-axe vs. sledgehammer duel.
Keeping in line with the tone of the piece is the amazing musical score, which seems to have been composed by an attention deficit 8 year old screwing around with the programmed tracks on an old Casio keyboard. Often the music will change from eerie noise to seductive jazz to chintzy bubblegum pop, all within the space of a minute, with NOT ONE of the styles being appropriate to what's happening on screen. There's a fine line between madness and genius and, for the makers of Marronnier, that line is called the horizon.
I'll finish this review with a question: Are you barber? No. You are not barber. If you want to find out who is barber and why, then you'll have to watch Marronnier. The answer will astound you. Or possibly bore you
