UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Reptileenbu Did you people see the same film I saw?

Kirandeep Yoder The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

rooprect There are 2 versions of this movie: the sexually explicit one and the censored PG13 one. My review is about the PG13 one which is 91 mins and released in the USA as "The Black Widow" by First Look Entertainment. And when they say it's PG13, they ain't kidding. All the explicit sexual scenes are cut (including the infamous tampon scene you may have heard about), there is zero nudity, and all the swear words are dubbed out.This is a very minimalist film about isolation, disconnection and unanswered questions. It will confuse & irritate anyone who is looking for a standard plot tied up with a pretty ribbon. Like the Brando film "Last Tango in Paris", it gives us the dysfunctional romance of two people who can't or won't share their past, who have no connection to the present and who haven't got any future. The only glue that holds them together is the house.The house, known as the "Rubber House" due to it's twisted black appearance, becomes the 3rd character in the story, like a voyeur but more than that--almost like an omniscient presence that observes everything but tells nothing. Again, this may frustrate the viewer who is looking for clearcut answers, but the poetry of the situation is far more important.There is also a lot of poetry in the dialogue, but you have to work very hard to catch the hints. There's a brilliant scene in a restaurant where the waiter (played by the unforgettable Issach de Bankole) describes a dish called "deconstructed jambalaya"--a recipe that consists of all the elements of jambalaya (a word that literally means "mishmash") but separated into its parts, not allowed to mix. The hilarious deadpan delivery of this speech along with Dafoe's reaction sums up the characters' relationship perfectly. In another cute piece of dialogue, Giada talks about how mathematicians never grow up because, living in an isolated world of abstract concepts, the never learn about the reality of life. This takes us back to the theme of disconnection and the timelessness of isolation which we feel in the Rubber House. The whole movie is very cryptically written, but if you pay attention to theme, not plot, it will make perfect sense.The key to enjoying this film is to imagine it's the first film ever made. Don't compare it to anything. Don't expect anything. There are no shootouts, car chases, criminal masterminds, Hollywood romances or melodramatic tear-jerkers. If you can somehow scrub those preconceptions out of your mind, I think you'll find that this movie is much closer to a real story than anything you've seen in the last 20 years. Whether that's entertaining or not is entirely up to you.

annbower The photography on the DVD is so dark I thought the screen had died. I think I missed seeing half of the movie. Still, it was poorly crafted and not interesting. I did not find the story related to the title "The Black Widow". I was hoping for a mystery or a thriller but did not get involved enough to care after the first few frames. I rented the movie especially for Willem Dafoe and was sad it wasted his talent. I do not believe Giada Colagrande has studied movie making long enough to develop a major motion picture. She is attractive and might develop into an actor but she took on too many tasks in this movie. Although they are married in real life, they lack chemistry on the screen. Their relationships did not seem believable. I do not understand why the other characters were even introduced into the plot.

crazydark Predictable, told a thousand times story with the usual drama in between, a couple of pretty raunchy sex scenes intermingled with some character paranoia, 70's style incidental violin horror music that is comical at times, i couldn't help chuckling to myself.I usually like Defoe, and it has to be said that the acting is not all that bad, the "plot" develops at a reasonable pace and does keep you guessing from time to time. Its just that it's all too predictable, i felt like i was watching a made for TV drama instead of a new movie. Maybe thats the style the directors wanted, but it has to be said that the review i read on here before i saw the movie could only have been written by someone involved in its production.Don't expect too much, and if i could wind the clock back i wouldn't have gone to see it at the cinema. I would wait for the bargain bins at your video shop, I'm sure it wont take long.

samholls I saw this movie in Venice Film Festival and I think it's a GREAT movie! It's funny and touching at the same time, full of tension and sexy, a little scary... and at the end I got really moved by it. It has a very original style and an awkwardness to it that makes it hard to define and to recognize. Most important, it stays with me still now, after two months since I saw it. But I can see why it's a movie that a lot of people don't get and won't like, it feels very intimate and intense, it makes you feel like an inappropriate voyeur... and that's something that most people don't want to deal with and get disturbed by (especially if there is sex involved). Also the fact that people know that Dafoe and Colagrande are a couple in real life (they wrote it together and they both act in it) I think might hurt the movie because people confuse what they see on screen with their real intimacy and get really embarrassed by it, they don't know how to deal with it and sometimes react really bad. I read a terrible review on Variety.com and was shocked of how stupid and mean it was, the reviewer didn't get it at all and seemed angry at the director for making the movie, which is a typical attitude of stupid and frustrated journalists 'wanna-be-directors' that I can't stand. But, as they say, the most interesting movies are always controversial and get the strongest reactions, in the good and the bad! So the fact that people either love it or hate it must be a good sign. Anyway I hope it gets released in the States so that you get a chance to see something really unique and judge yourself!