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Freud's Second Law (2001)

Note: Spoilers. If you can spoil something that's already rotten!

In a title card that appears early in the abysmal "Freud's Second Law," the scripter suggests that "real life seems to have no plot." A children's play has more plot than this film. A grocery list has more plot than this film. This visually drab, poorly acted, annoying film has almost nothing to say. It has one interesting plot idea, which could make for a remarkable film, and it shits it out, pays little or no attention to it, and moves back into being horrid. What a waste of 80 minutes.

The film should have been interesting and right up my alley, so to speak. The first shot is a fully clothed woman sitting on a counter-top wearing a HUGE strap on and smoking a cigarette. But filmmaker Ian Gamazon, who does almost everything behind the camera here, soon segues into one of the most slow moving and dull sequences ever to be lensed. His seeming non-film obviously has no budget, so he overcomes this obstacle by having no dialogue. Scenes evolve with foley or wild sound throughout. It is 20 minutes into the film before anyone is shown to speak. And it's a really long and dull 20 minutes. Gamazon also uses pop music, radio station chatter, and books on tape - yes, books on tape, to provide sound for his film. And the sound is atrocious. The music sounds as if it were taped on cheap old cassettes off of AM radio.

This might all be fine and dandy if the film were visually interesting. It is not. The lead character, a female who we eventually hear named as Rachael, does nothing. Nothing. She plays with a snail to remind us of just how fucking slow the film is and what ridiculous dolts we are for watching it. The film's visuals are technically adept. But they are devoid of artistry and imagination.

One of the scenes most tepid scenes appears when dialogue is finally utilized. In it, Rachael sits and recites a litany of things she is afraid of, such as, "I'm afraid of cheesecake. I'm afraid of growing old." Surely one of the things she is not afraid of is boring us to tears.

And eventually a tiny plot, really an idea of a plot, evolves. But it is never fully realized. The story finds the protagonist, who has been cuckold by her boyfriend (isn't it time to make the term genderless?), finally breaking out of her sheer boredom and taking revenge on a couple of men who have treated her friends badly. She abducts them and anally rapes them with the aforementioned strap-on. These scenes are brutal. Finally the film has a little breath. But it is too little, too late. And worse, the film has Rachael seeming to fall in love with one of the men she has "raped." I think she is somehow to supposedly realize he is innocent. Gamazon is such an awful filmmaker I really didn't understand that part.

I don't know what "Freud's Second Law" is. Lodger's first law is this: Don't see this film.

Report Card

Script: F

Acting: F

Cinematography\Lighting: F

Special Effects\Make Up: F

Music:
F

Final Grade: F

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