Offspring (1996) User Reviews

Not a bad thriller, with disturbing elements, but not spectacular either

[PeterMitchell-506-564364 · 6/10 · 17 January 2013]

Offspring plays off as a sort of pumped up version of many of the seventy soapies. It is indeed a thriller, the underlying motivations and reasons from the villianess revealed near it's finale. Hot looking daughter, Gaabrielle Fitzpatrick, is not a happy girl, especially at the request of her long lost stepmother/villainess, Rosa (Contouri, great here). She arrives at her estate with her co-star fiancé (Robert Mammone). We even see Chantal totally naked in one scene by the pool. Chantal even got Mammone's character's agent to call him. Driven by so much vengeful desire, Chantal's intent on these two not leaving her estate alive. We go back in Fitzpatrick's past, describing her stepmother as the devil, which I truly believed, when the shocking truth about Rosa became apparent. She's real a nasty pasty, a manipulator, at one stage turning the boyfriend against the stepdaughter, making her out as some sort of cook, where I think her character had a mental history too. We see some flashbacks of the daughter as a teen asked to do some weirdo stuff with her father and Rosa. There's way too much rambling dialogue, mostly concerning Fitzpatrick's past, which some of it so unbelievable, I had to cover my mouth to suppress my amusement. I even got the feeling Fitzpatrick, didn't believe some of it either at times. Yet still, I found this enjoyable as I did Chantal and the delicious Fitzpatrick.

Utter tedium

[alanstrawbridge · 1/10 · 13 August 2005]

This abomination of a movie fails to entertain on every level and contains no redeeming moments. It even fails to qualify as a slice of low budget kitsch and is less interesting than an episode of a poor afternoon soap opera. The majority of the film consists of the main character explaining her evil motives to her daughter in such long tedious scenes that you find yourself checking your watch and thinking about what you need from the supermarket during her endless diatribes. The script, which concerns itself entirely with exposition and zero action (in what is supposed to be a thriller) seems to have been written to enable the director to move the camera as little as possible during the interminable 83 minutes running time.

RECOMMENDED!

The perverse...

[Foreverisacastironmess123 · 8/10 · 19 December 2011]

Hello! I thought I'd try and give this obscure movie a real review. This is a very dramatic movie, but not ridiculously so. I personally never found it melodramatic. It's quite paler and grainy looking, but not horrible. The Pavarotti opera song "Nessun Dorma" is used to great and sinister effect. It's a very mellow type of a picture, perhaps even a little bland, but it's also in its own very subtle way quite edgy and extreme with some of the disturbing and controversial sexual themes involved. And after a while this very obscure, exquisitely shot little movie really starts to f**k with you. It's a slow-burner to be sure. Something I really love about this is how engrossing and absorbing it is, and most of the time it's just people sitting and exchanging long monologues. But it's not at all boring. It's very tense, and it's all played out in a strongly compelling and elegant way. ::: The movie starts with a young married couple who are both actors, Maria and Ben, who's lives are disrupted when Maria gets an invitation from her estranged mother, Rosa, asking her to come visit her at her beautiful country mansion. Maria at first refuses, saying that her mother is dead to her. But she is convinced by Ben, who feels very strongly regarding family, because he was adopted. They arrive, and soon meet and greet the bewitching Rosa Cassini. Chantal Contouri was excellent in her role. To me she gives the best performance of the movie. She's so sweet and warm at first, and you wonder what could such a nice lady possibly have done to make her daughter hate her so. But you soon learn that she isn't nice at all, but in fact quite a wicked lady who has hated Maria for years and has plotted an evil plan for her. Now, the reason she hates her own daughter is, well... Rosa, ever since she was a young girl, was always desperately in love with a man named Carlos, a rough, mafia type person, an all-round scumbag. She had passionately been secretly sleeping with him for years, even after she married her first husband, Maria's father. A kind man, whom she saw as a weak one and secretly despised and only married for his money. She arranged it so that he died in a fatal car crash, and she inherited his vast fortune, for he was of the Italian aristocracy. She then married Carlos who gradually started to ignore the ageing Rosa, and concentrate all his vile attentions on the young and unwilling Maria. This went on for years, with Rosa an active participant in the abuse. But eventually, she grew so mad with jealousy and bitterness, that one night she decided to shoot dead her beloved and Maria. But, in the ensuing struggle, she only managed to shoot Carlos, merely injuring and knocking Maria unconscious. Hearing the approaching servants, she panicked and placed the gun in Maria's hand, thereby implicating her as the killer. The affair was hushed up and Rosa was ordered to leave Italy, saying that if she ever came back she would be killed. She got Maria out of her life by placing her in boarding schools and didn't see her for years. She would have happily forgotten about her then, but when Maria became a successful actress, it was more than Rosa could bear, and she devised a revenge so sick and twisted, as to be almost unbelievable... Rosa is her very best and most menacing near the end, when she has a drugged Ben and Maria at her mercy. She is jealousy personified as she gets right in Maria's face and wickedly reveals that, years ago, before Maria was even born, she became pregnant with Carlos's child, but because she was so young, the baby was given to poor childless servants in secret. She then lets loose with the movie's biggest revelation: that the child was Ben, making him and Maria brother and sister. She reveals that it was her machinations that first caused them to meet and fall in love. Not long after Rosa is killed in a fiery confrontation, and the movie ends on the question of if Maria will choose to stay with Ben, knowing now what she does. It's not like the ickyness of this movie is a huge part of it or anything. You only find out in the last 10 minutes. And they don't revel in it, it's not rubbed in your face, it's really not that kind of movie. It's all presented in a very tasteful non sleazy way. This is a great movie, watch it and see a most daring thriller unlike any you've ever likely to have seen before or since. Ciao.