October 14, 2002
By Beate Herrmann

I have seen worse films. But a lot more better ones. I wouldn't say it's a waste of time for a Joe fan as he looks gorgeous in it and by God, there are some great bum shots! Joe is great in looking normal one moment and menacing or disturbed the next. And I don't even think that Heather is too bad an actress. But the movie just doesn't make any sense at all.

I am a huge Nicci French fan. I have read all their books and they get me every time. They tell stories about what happens if a woman doesn't feel safe anymore, if she can't trust her surroundings and everything is upside down. When she encounters mysterious or violent strangers or doesn't know who her enemies are and when she experiences bad things and nobody believes her. They deal with what happens when a seemingly intact family reveals skeletons in the closet (or in the front garden) or when memory fails and they have to reconstruct their past and present to have a future. They are deeply psychological as well as real thrillers, and the heroines are tough women who fight for their lifes, even if it seems foolish sometimes.

Killing Me Softly the book is very good. It deals with sexual obsession and what happens if you give it priority over reason, until it threatens your life.

Alice has abandoned a safe but maybe dull life with a loving boyfriend and secure job for this stranger she meets on the street and goes home with on impulse. She marries him knowing nothing about him as he is very reluctant to reveal things about his past. Only slowly she learns that he is a mountaineer and lost a girlfriend on an expedition that went horribly and mysteriously wrong. She wants to know more about him "so that I can love you more", he sees no reason in it. "You know everything about me you need to know". He demands her total trust, it's essential to him, and yet he wants to control her while at the same time not telling her about him. How can you trust someone you don't know? She starts digging and learns that he had an affair with a married woman, Adele Blanchard, who has vanished mysteriously. She finds out about a woman who claims that Adam has raped her years ago. She flees from him and tries to uncover Adele's body.

That is about what book and movie have in common. But the movie twists very important facts around and gives the character Deborah a new role and meaning. The inevitable showdown is both ridiculous and senseless. The book makes sense because it writes about disturbed souls and their twisted sense of love. Adam who murders those he loves and would have murdered Alice whom he, in his own way, really loves. Without this, the movie is pointless.

You simply cannot tell a complex story like that in only 90 mins.

The movie reduces it to a whodunnit, with Alice suspecting the wrong person all the time, and it gives a totally ludicrous explanation for the murders. And then we have Adam, who never told Alice anything about his troubled past, looking sadly at Alice saying "You should have trusted me", and walking away.

So all in all it is a thriller with some kinky sex scenes thrown in for good measure (which aren't as far as extreme as in the book, just some tying up and asphyxiation), and Joe beating up a mugger rather cruelly.

My advice is, read the book and concentrate on the bum shots in the movie.