Asylum
Directed by David Mackenzie, Asylum follows a 1950s family living in a home on the grounds of an asylum after Max (Hugh Bonneville), the patriarch, is assigned to serve as deputy director of a remote psychiatric hospital. Neither his wife, Stella (Natasha Richardson), nor his young son, Charlie (Augustus Jeremiah Lewis), are particularly happy about the arrangements, though Stella finds herself slowly becoming attracted to Edgar Stark (Marton Csokas), a charismatic inmate. Despite the obvious repercussions of an extramarital affair and the sage advice of Dr. Cleave (Ian McKellen), a colleague of her husband, Stella's slow-burning attraction becomes an all out obsession; before long, Stella is barely aware that she is risking her family, her sanity, and even her very life for Edgar. Asylum is based on a novel by Patrick McGrath.
Director: David Mackenzie
Starring: Natasha Richardson, Hugh Bonneville, Gus Lewis, Ian McKellen, Joss Ackland
Patrick McGrath's novel provides a solid and suspenseful story, even if it loses much of its bite in Mackenzie's hands.
The film, with its uniformly terrific cast, stern Gothic overtones and steady but measured pacing, is a crisp, old-fashioned delight, eschewing cheap tricks for repeated tiny pricks of unease that work up to a continuous gnawing dread.
A classy unintentional hoot.
Natasha Richardson glides through the film version of Patrick McGrath's novel Asylum in various states of fear, desire and undress, a swan among Yorkshire frumps.
Nothing wrecks the mood of a high-toned British period piece about erotic obsession quicker than an unintentional laugh. In which case, prepare for Asylum to be derailed by snorts in all the wrong places.
David Mackenzie
Berlin International Film Festival (2005)
Best Actress
British Independent Film Awards (2005)
Best Actress
Evening Standard British Film Awards (2006)
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