Roman Polanski's third feature Cul-De-Sac is a more comedic take on an age-old premise: a couple (Donald Pleasance and Francoise Dorleac) are put upon by a criminal on the run (Lionel Stander) and the film becomes a power game of their interactions. It doesn't have much in the way of narrative, but instead builds itself around the ups and downs of their power struggles and the way they confront one another, as a whole or in individual pairings. It starts off well enough with a solid opening act that had quite a few laughs, mostly thanks to Pleasance, but after a while it began to wear thin.
The entire thing relies on your interest in the characters and their games of power and sexual undertones with one another, but I couldn't have cared less about any of them so I found myself dreadfully bored for most of it. The final act raised my interest a little bit as everything goes wildly out of control, but it took too long for me to get there. Lionel Stander is a solid presence, creating a very uneasy feeling whenever he walks in the room, but Dorleac and Pleasence began to grate on my nerves rather quickly. I've always been a big Polanski fan and he still shows here his ability to create a complete atmosphere that is fully in tune with his vision, along with his fetish for isolating his characters in secluded locations, but I unfortunately didn't care about the characters in a film that is all about them.
The entire thing relies on your interest in the characters and their games of power and sexual undertones with one another, but I couldn't have cared less about any of them so I found myself dreadfully bored for most of it. The final act raised my interest a little bit as everything goes wildly out of control, but it took too long for me to get there. Lionel Stander is a solid presence, creating a very uneasy feeling whenever he walks in the room, but Dorleac and Pleasence began to grate on my nerves rather quickly. I've always been a big Polanski fan and he still shows here his ability to create a complete atmosphere that is fully in tune with his vision, along with his fetish for isolating his characters in secluded locations, but I unfortunately didn't care about the characters in a film that is all about them.