Asylum (2005)

Asylum (2005)

      Adapted from Patrick McGrath’s novel by playwright and screenwriter Patrick Marber,
ASYLUM plays as throwback to a certain type of women’s film that was popular in the 1950s
and early 60s. Indeed, if this movie had been made in the mid- to late 60s, undoubtedly Vanessa
Redgrave would have been sought to portray the lead character. So it perhaps may be
appropriate that her daughter Natasha Richardson has been cast as Stella Raphael, a depressed
woman in a loveless marriage who is ripe for – well, for something.

       Stella, her husband Max (Hugh Bonneville) and their young son arrive at the titular
establishment outside London. It’s the early 1960s and Stella doesn’t quite fit in with the other
doctors’ wives. Not only is she about a decade or more younger, she is also high-strung. She’s
a misfit and is clearly recognized as such by one of her husband’s colleagues, the oleaginous Dr.
Peter Cleve (Ian McKellen). Stella soons finds herself attracted to one of Cleve’s patients, the
brooding Edgar (Marton Csokas), with whom she eventually begins an affair. Edgar, of course,
has a history: he was a promising sculptor who bludgeoned his wife to death and was deemed
mentally unstable at trial and sentenced to imprisonment in a mental institution.

       Stella’s affair with Edgar eventually provides him with a means of escape and soon the
bored housewife has abandoned her family to take up with her paramour in a seamy London
neighborhood. When she is tracked down by the police, Stella is welcomed back by her cuckold
of a husband. She makes a vow never to see Edgar again. Of course, since the film is only about
half over, the audience knows that won’t be the case. In case this interests you, I won’t bother
to go into the nitty gritty plot details. Let’s just say that there’s the inevitable tragedy, a couple of
twists and a not-so-surprise ending.

       Director David Mackenzie also helmed YOUNG ADAM which dealt with another women
obsessed with a possibly dangerous man. That film was a little more claustrophobic than this, but
both share similar themes. Mackenzie is a good director of actors, but then, when you are
working with people of the caliber of Ewen McGregor and Tilda Swinton (in YOUNG ADAM),
and Ian McKellen, Natasha Richardson and Marton Csokas, not to mention an underutilized
Judy Parfitt, you pretty much can’t go too far astray. Marber’s screenplay is passable but the
material, despite its flashes of nudity and sexual situations, seems very old-fashioned, and not
necessarily in a good way.

       ASYLUM came heavily recommended by a colleague, so I went to it with expectations
of seeing something above average; that I was disappointed is more my own fault.

                            Rating:                  C
                            MPAA Rating:      R for strong sexuality, some violence and brief language
                            Running time:       99 mins.

                                    Viewed at the Regal Union Square Theater