Guardian Online
May 31, 2002
By Steve Rose

Killing Me Softly must have looked great on paper. On screen, though, it is a catastrophe. Steve Rose rakes through the debris

Success in the movies has many fathers, all of whom will expect a thank you in your Oscar speech. But failure is never quite the orphan the industry would like it to be, and erotic thriller Killing Me Softly has all the makings of a messy paternity suit. The production team must have looked promising on paper: bestselling author Nicci French, Cannes-winning director Chen Kaige, bankable stars Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes.

But like a nightmare game of Chinese whispers, these promising components appear to have had a cumulative negative effect, resulting in a film that no one party can take the fall for, but that has been unanimously declared a disaster. Early audiences laughed out loud at the kinky sex scenes. Advance reviews have been uniformly negative. The normally generous Empire magazine has called it "a hilariously bad movie that has to be seen to be believed...the funniest movie of the year, but it's not a comedy." The Independent has greeted it with "Oh joy, a new contender for worst film of the year." But most damning are the trade magazines. Screen International points to "bad casting, limp dialogue and a pedestrian script", while Variety calls it "a turgid erotic thriller that plays like Zalman King-meets-vintage Brian De Palma without the latter's wit or style, a lamely scripted effort sunk by lifeless dialogue and two uncharismatic leads".

Parent studio MGM has pushed back the film's US release several times, and could well send it straight to video, though Britain, like Japan and Italy, is set for a full theatrical release. Nobody sets out to make a bad movie, the saying goes, but for the benefit of anyone who does, Killing Me Softly is the perfect case study.

The authors

Journalist couple Nicci Gerrard and Sean French performed the equivalent of a corporate merger in 1996, combining their talents and names to form Nicci French, a bestselling author of psychological thrillers. In their third book, conventional, professional Alice meets mysterious Eton-educated Adam, a stranger whose hobbies are heroic mountaineering and "obliterating" sex. She abandons her comfortable London life and dull boyfriend and, as the back cover puts it, "love and sexual obsession overwhelm her until they threaten everything: her safety, her sanity and finally her life".

The producers

Canadian director/producer Ivan Reitman has generated billions of dollars of box office revenue, primarily from low-aiming comedies like Animal House, Ghostbusters and Beethoven (the one about the dog, not the composer). After forming the Montecito Picture Company in 1998, with former Universal chairman Tom Pollock, he scored a couple of big hits with Road Trip (something like a gross-out update of Animal House) and Evolution (something like a gross-out update of Ghostbusters). Perhaps concerned that his cinematic legacy appealed to an average mental age of about 14, Reitman began to look for more mature projects to develop. He optioned the rights on the Nicci French manuscript that year, stipulating that the title it was originally going to be published under - Crazy For Me - be changed, as it sounded too much like a comedy.

The adaptation

This was the first major screenplay for Kara Lindstrom, a former set decorator, and her employers were clearly looking over her shoulder all the time. They could have been muttering "Hitchcock's Suspicion in modern-day London" or "Sleeping With the Enemy with more nudity", but what they got is best summarised as "Bridget Jones meets Story of O". In paring down the 358-page novel to a 100-minute film, familiar movie sacrifices had to be made: supporting characters were jettisoned, the plot condensed and the ending completely changed (see later). This retooling has resulted in some implausible actions and unfortunate dramatic juxtapositions, though. Perhaps it was a bad idea to have Adam propose to Alice just after he had repeatedly slammed the head of a mugger in a phone-booth door, for example. And perhaps "sometimes I feel like I don't know you" was not the ideal response for Alice when Adam ties her to a tabletop near the film's climax.

The director

Chen Kaige helped put Chinese cinema on the map in the 1980s and 90s with award- winning films like Yellow Earth and Farewell My Concubine, which took the top prize at Cannes. He had been looking at Hollywood scripts for some time and chose this one in June 2000, partly because he would never have been allowed to make it in China. He then made further alterations to it with the writer. He had never directed outside of China, or in the English language, and later acknowledged he was unaccustomed to European film practices like taking a tea break every afternoon, and rehearsing a scene before shooting it. Why the producers thought he was right for this project is anybody's guess. Perhaps they were confusing him with Ang Lee.

The leads

Heather Graham's combination of innocence and bodaciousness was deemed perfect for the part of Alice. She had combined these qualities to arresting effect in Boogie Nights and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, but has never had to carry a film before. This inexperience could have helped her play a woman out her depth, but her performance is unconvincing and restrained - usually by ropes. Alice became American instead of English, perhaps on the basis of Graham's English accent in From Hell.
Joseph Fiennes established himself as prime historical crumpet with romantic roles in Elizabeth and Shakespeare In Love but had yet to prove himself as a mature actor. Fiennes has the eyebrows to do "brooding", and a strange Chinese tattoo on his back communicates "mystery", and he learned mountain climbing. Otherwise, he seems woefully under-skilled to portray a complex, ambiguous character like Adam. Perhaps they were confusing him with brother Ralph.

The chemistry

It is essential in heavy-breathing two-handers to talk up the "chemistry" even when there clearly isn't any. With her record of forming on-set relationships (Heath Ledger, Ed Norton, director Stephen Hopkins), Graham is usually gossip-column nitroglycerin, but in February this year she announced that she'd banned herself from falling in love with co-stars. Fiennes has been linked with Naomi Campbell but now has a steady girlfriend. To stoke up the much-needed heat, reports were leaked that the pair spent seven days in bed filming the sex scenes, and that Graham didn't use the customary "modesty pouch". There were also rumours of trouble with the censors. Cuts were allegedly made in the US, according to Kaige, but not in China.

The sex scenes

Mindful of the cliche minefield presented by movie sex scenes, Killing Me Softly boldly pushes the envelope. There are still the familiar trappings of movie eroticism: shots of discarded clothes landing on the floor, hypothermia-inducing clinches in snowy doorways, and violently passionate embraces where the leads look as if they have powerful magnets in their mouths. As a 21st century answer to the butter scene in Last Tango in Paris, there's also a new form of asphyxiation bondage involving long silk ribbons and a tent peg over the fireplace. The technique might just work from an engineering point of view, but looks better suited to strangling horses.

The Hollywood ending

Anyone who's planning to take in the flick better stop reading now. At the end of the novel, Adam really is the mass murderer Alice suspected him to be all along. In the film, Adam is innocent and was just acting like a mass murderer all along. The real murderer turns out to be his sister Deborah (Natascha McElhone), who has been in love with her brother since they had an incestuous fling as teenagers. "I'm talking about fucking, Alice!" Deborah screams as she prepares to bludgeon Alice to death in a graveyard. Fortunately Adam arrives just in time. They struggle, then Alice shoots Deborah with a flare gun, and she dies an undignified death, like a human Roman candle.

The national newspaper

The most conspicuous brand name running through the film is, unfortunately, the Guardian. A key character is a Guardian journalist who - much to the alarm of the real magazine's staff - is supposed to be interviewing Adam for a Weekend cover story. The journalist character also tells Alice about Adam's mysterious past, prompting Alice to investigate, disguised as a reporter (she puts on glasses). Pretty much everyone in the film reads the Guardian, which suggests that this kind of erotic adventure could happen to someone like you at any time.

Killing Me Softly is released on June 21.