Denial (1990)

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General		Extras
Category	Drama	Main Menu Audio
Rating
Year Of Production	1990
Running Time	102:52
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	1,2,3,4,5,6	Directed By	Erin Dignam
Studio Distributor	Warner Vision	Starring	Robin Wright Jason Patric Barry Primus Christina Harnos David Duchovny
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$19.95	Music	Harold Budd

    If you like your movies slow, deep and heavy,  then Denial - The Dark Side of Passion is probably right up your street. What can possibly happen when opposites attract? Certainly not a marriage made in heaven. Shot in 1991 before Robin Wright became hitched to Sean, the film also leads with Jason Patric playing his usual dark, brooding role. Sarah, played by Robin Wright, known as 'Loon' to her buddies, plays the blonde, easy going, swinging, good-time girl that typified the 60's. They used to be known as hippies until the more austere 70's forced a tightening up of the image of beads, bongs and free love. Obviously her grip on reality is a little unsure and she has has some difficulty sorting out fact from fantasy. An intense affair develops between Michael, played by Jason Patric, and Loon.

    Although the passion is there, Michael can't identify with her easy going friends and demands the deep and meaningful commitment that Loon can't deliver. David Duchovny has a small role as a would-be suitor for Loon which only magnifies Michael's jealousy. Eventually Loon splits and finds solace as housekeeper and nanny to Jay (Barry Primus) and his daughter Sid, played by Christina Harnos. The years pass with Sarah tending the garden and tutoring until a ghost from the past turns up in the form of Julie (Rae Dawn Chong), who arrives to make a hologram for Jay. Julie used to be one of the gang and her appearance awakens memories and feelings in Sarah for her long lost lover. As the feelings and memories intensify, the flashbacks become more frequent and her grip on reality starts to loosen once more .....

    It's an old, clichéd theme and both Wright and Patric deliver the goods in a competent fashion but we're left with a feeling of having seen it all before - the good thing is that it's possible to doze off for a few minutes, wake up and not to have missed anything of great importance! The support actors are also competent in their roles, but uninspiring, and if it wasn't  for the emotional climax to the film from Wright, we'd feel that the last hour and a half had passed by without much happening of note. Patric and Wright certainly didn't sizzle on-screen (maybe their real-life affair was on the wane) and the technical aspects of the transfer certainly didn't make up for the lack of substance in the movie.

Video

    The transfer is put onto a single layer DVD-5 so we're not expecting great things from the transfer and we don't get them. The focus is soft throughout and although there aren't too many dark scenes, low level detail is also limited. There isn't any low level noise.

    The colours were quite nicely portrayed in soft pastels in keeping with the gentle pace of the film.

    There was a little graininess in the film and pixelization in places such as on the actors' noses. Thee was also mild telecine wobble throughout, most noticeably during the title credits. At least the soft focus meant that aliasing was absent. There was just an occasional white fleck indicating a clean original film master.

    I was having problem discerning dialogue so I went to switch on the subtitles to find there weren't any!

    The disc is a single layered DVD-5.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    If you were hoping for better things from the audio then you will be disappointed as it shares the same degree of mediocrity as the video.

    There's just the one audio track - an English Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack.

    The dialogue was often muffled and indistinct and significantly lower than ambient noise and sound effects which was irritating. I found switching on Dolby Prologic processing helped dialogue clarity but this shouldn't have been necessary.

    They haven't even got the sync right on this transfer - check out the nails being hammered at 12:57. This even extends to out of phase lip sync.

    Music is credited to Harold Budd. There's no great stirring theme but appropriate little riffs and arpeggios to augment the atmosphere. There's a few snippets from artists such as Nilsson and Judy Collins to augment the soundtrack but I barely noticed them.

    You might as well play back the feature through your telly as there is no centre, surround or subwoofer activity unless you indulge in a little Digital Signal Processing.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

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    The video is chopped down from the original and of VHS quality.

    The audio was of similar mediocre quality and no better than a clean videotape version.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall