DVD Some Velvet Morning

"Some velvet mornin' when I'm straight I'm gonna open up your gate And maybe tell you 'bout Phaedra And how she gave me life And how she made it end." Lee Hazlewood.

Writer/director Neil LaBute acknowledges Swedish playwright August Strindberg after the credits of Some Velvet Morning. And well he should, for his Some Velvet Morning has naturalism with touches of Ibsen in an entertaining two hander that barely covers the violent potential of its male, Fred (Stanley Tucci) and female (Alice Eve). The film is contemporary-dialogue driven, and that works swell for me, a word guy.

Lee Hazelwood's lyrics, above, sung by Hazelwood and Nancy Sinatra in the '70's, suggest that the mythical Phaedra, whom Hippolytus spurned, holds questions to be unanswered about the ballet between the sexes. LaBute's modern romance, albeit she is a prostitute, suggests few answers for lovers are yet to be found even over thousands of years.

As in Strindberg's Miss Julia, the sexual play is masked by a restraint that is in check only part way through the film. Fred returns to Velvet after four years expecting her to drop everything for him. The dialogue dance grows intense as it's clear she does not want to resume the relationship. She repeats, "You need to leave, before I get…" as he demands she finish the thought. Hers is largely a reactive role that harks back to times when women were barely heard or seen.

Although the intense sexual battle in the film might lead to violence, as it did in the Phaedra legend, restraint holds sway, just as you might expect from attorney Fred and classy call girl Velvet. The verbal violence does not have the high class intonations of, say, Tracey Letts' August: Osage County or the middle class rudeness of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf; it does deftly display the hidden horror of relationships gone bad. LaBute lets his actors suggest the bad blood between former lovers and by extension the dangers of any male-female contests.

I hope the film's success does not rest on the surprise ending, which may trivialize an eternal contest between males and females. The hooker- with-a heart of gold motif doesn't apply. This Adam and Eve are in charge of their fates, and it's not pretty.

Lets get this out of the way, its not a very entertaining movie, after all it contains only one location, 2 actors and it draws more from La butte's theater background than film language, this is also an oddity as it is a straight drama(occasional joke aside) unlike Labutte's dark comedies of the past; that said, solid and disturbing dialog, a surprising ending and a powerhouse performance by Stanley Tucci raise this as one of the most interesting films to come out in a while.

As said in the summaries, the movie pits a bitter and unstable character played by Stanley Tucci against a woman played by Alice Eve, who seems to hold secrets in both her own life as well as the shared common past between the both of them, and as their conversation prolongs, secrets, bile and nastiness are spread all over the clinical white townhouse.

Stanley Tucci, as said previously, steals every scene he is in, while Alice eve plays it more subdued, but then again, her character doesn't have as many grand moments, and she does a magnificent job, especially towards the end of the film.

The cinematography and set design fit the movie perfectly, contrasting the neat empty house with the fiery discussion that takes place in it, and while I'm sure it was a deliberate decision, the hand-held camera seems to be operated by someone with Parkinsons disease, there are scenes where it seems to shake and bob all over the place, becoming a bit distracting.

The movie may be off putting to many, first of all because the dialog is an exercise in spitefulness and cruelty, which many people will find hard to stomach, secondly at first glance there appears to be a randomness in the plot, which is to be expected as this is a dialog driven film, however this lack of entertainment may drive away some, finally there's THAT ending, some may feel cheated, some will think its one clever piece of cookie, and to say anything about it here would spoil the film in its entirety, Finally, i guarantee you, that if you make it past all the prejudices that could arise from watching something like this, you will find a very original, brilliant and haunting piece of cinema.