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Relased by: Tartan Video
Released on: 11/9/2004
Director: Lynne Stopkewich
Cast: Molly Parker, Joel Bissonnette, Deanna Milligan, Callum Keith Rennie
Year: 2000
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The Movie:
Leila Murray (Canadian actress Molly Parker of Kissed) is a pretty young woman who spends her days working as a receptionist in a small motel in an equally small town in Washington State named Suspicious River. Although she is a married woman, she prostitutes herself unbeknownst to her husband to make some extra money. These men who pass through her hotel are nameless, faceless creatures who she is able to exploit for cash by using her body, and seeing as she doesn't get to know or become attached to any of them, they are the perfect clientele. She doesn't do this just for money though - something inside Leila gets a kick out it and she's maybe got a little bit of a sadomasochistic streak running through her.
This all changes one night when she meets a man named Gary Jensen (Callum Keith Rennie of The Butterfly Effect). He's a bit of a mystery man who instantly enthralls Leila and she sees him as a way out of her mundane life in a small town. Things hardly go the way she thinks they will though, and the two form a mutually abusive relationship that just gets more and more twisted as the film moves on.
Leila obviously has some serious issues she needs to work through and for some reason that isn't made entirely clear, she latches onto Gary in hopes of somehow doing just that and using him as an escape device to get out of her boring life and spice things up a little bit. This is a reasonably believable premise, one that has happened to me in my own personal life which in turn made the setup for this film an intriguing one for me.
However, it goes too far - at least I initially though that it was going to. As a fan of sleaze, gratuitous nudity and extreme imagery it almost pains me to say that this movie probably would have played better had the explicitness been toned down a little bit. Thankfully the back story does finally get told later on in the film and some of the nastiness fits in better once you get to the ending, but by that point the meaning in the story has been at least partially eclipsed by the sex and violence (there is a very unsettling rape scene in here).
Molly Parker does a great job in the lead though, playing her distanced, cold character with a hidden dark side that eventually gets brought a little bit closer to the surface. Callum Keith Rennie is very intense in his role as the man in the hotel who likes things a little rougher than most of Leila's clients do. He's more than a little bit scary in a couple of scenes and does a good job with the material he has to work with.
Video/Audio/Extras:
This film makes great use of colors and this anamorphic widescreen transfer from Tartan Video does a nice job of bringing those colors to life on DVD. Hues are distinct and clean and never bleed into one another and the black levels stay strong and deep. Flesh tones look natural and lifelike and aside from some slight edge enhancement and a tiny bit of mpeg compression that creeps into one or two of the darker scenes, this picture is quite strong and free of print damage.
Suspicious River comes to DVD with a nice, atmospheric Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound mix in its native English language with optional English closed captioning. While there isn't a ton of swirling action, shoot outs or high speed pursuits to give your receiver the right good thumping it craves, this mix does do a good job of using the rear channels and the subwoofer to create an atmospheric sound mix that suits the film nicely.
Extras include the film's theatrical trailer and a feature length commentary from writer/director Lynne Stopkewich. In the commentary she discusses the influences in the film (it was based on a novel by Laura Kasishke) as well as how it was working with Molly Parker again (the two previously teamed up for Kissed). It's not a half bad track, there's a lot of good information in it and some of the ambiguities of the film are cleared up therein.
The Final Word:
While I like seeing Molly Parker naked, the film could have been better. Suspicious River does have its moments but ultimately ends up feeling a little contrived and it's message, if there is one, gets lost about two thirds of the way through. The movie looks great though and the performances aren't half bad at all - it just didn't reach the potential that it had.