Review: Bitter & Twisted (2008)

[Steve Rhodes]

BITTER & TWISTED
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2009 Steve Rhodes

RATING (0 TO ****):  * 1/2

BITTER & TWISTED -- I think not.  A much more appropriate title for this 
snoozefest would be SLOW & POINTLESS.

Set in Australia, this film, by writer and director Christopher Weekes, has 
a bunch of characters and lots of stories, which are interspersed but not so 
obviously connected.  In perhaps the central story, Steve Rodgers plays 
Jordan Lombard, a man so overweight that the clinical term for his condition 
would be morbidly obese.  Jordan, an increasingly unsuccessful car salesman, 
spurns the affections of his wife Penelope "Penny" (Noni Hazlehurst).  He 
spends most of the movie going deeper and deeper into a funk.

Penny, who thinks she might be pregnant, is a fifty-three-year-old woman 
whose pudgy and aging body is helped by her sporadic smile.  Still, when a 
handsome young hunk picks her up in a bar and takes her back to his 
apartment, she doesn't find it the least bit strange that he is attracted to 
her.

Meanwhile, another character is trying to work out his sexuality issues.  He 
might be gay or might not be.  He's not sure.

Another story is the canonical one about the spurned lover who can't get her 
boyfriend to leave his wife.

With little music or ambient noise, this quiet film slowly meanders its way 
across the screen until the closing credits let us leave.  None of the 
characters ever seem genuine or interesting enough so that we'd be ready to 
suspend disbelief.  Never are we motivated enough to wonder about where any 
of the stories are headed or to try to figure out any of the small mysteries 
the characters are trying to unravel about their lives.

"Here's some free advice," Jordan's boss tells him, trying to get him 
engaged in the world again.  His boss then screams at him, "Wake up!"  This 
is exactly what I kept wanting do.  I wanted to scream at the movie itself, 
which kept doing the cinematic equivalent of sleepwalking through just about 
every frame.

BITTER & TWISTED runs 1:30, but it feels more like three hours.

The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival 
(www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 25-March 8, 2009.

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