Killing Me Softly
begins with superimposition of snow-covered mountains on the
faces of Heather Graham and Joseph Fiennes making love.
Suddenly, there is a tragic accident involving parka-clad
climbers inching their way up a near vertical incline. The
plutonic themes of love and death are thus firmly set in a film
about extremes –passion, obsession, violence, deception, mystery
and murder. Boil it down, Killing Me Softly is about
power and control within relationships whether given away,
abused, or struggling to reclaim it from a position of
helplessness.
Award-winning Chinese director Chen Kaige (The Emperor and
the Assassin, Farewell My Concubine) tackles his
first Western film with considerable impact. It has all the
richness and depth of his previous work, creating a compellingly
erotic love story which twists into a suspenseful murder mystery
exploring the dark, urgent desires deep within.
Alice Loudon (Heather Graham) lives with her comfortable, safe
and unchallenging boyfriend Jake (Jason Hughes). Their domestic
life shows a familiar rapport, both interacting as almost two
halves of the same person, the connection taken for granted by
both of them.
On her way to work, Alice is thrilled to complete awareness by
an accidental meeting with a mysterious stranger named Adam
(Joseph Fiennes) when their fingers touch on a pedestrian
crossing button. Adam’s dark, magnetic eyes go deeply into
Alice, who is innocently open and unprepared. Without a word
they cross the street, but she is utterly aware of this
stranger’s every move and breath. Alice almost misses the
entrance to her work, her attention fixated upon Adam.
Arriving at her desk, she goes directly to the window to see him
enter bookshop across the way. Later, Alice feels compelled to
leave work and find him at their, discovering he is a famous
hero and author who survived the tragic accident glimpsed in the
opening scene. He invites her, with a riveting intensity reeking
of obsession, to his house. With a hint of hesitation but
compelled by the passion aroused in her, Alice takes him up on
the offer where a night of passion ensues.
Following their tryst, Alice breaks off her relationship with
Jake. Adam then introduces her to his friends and the
exhilarating world of mountain climbing, where extreme risk and
potential danger are as heady as oxygen. There she meets the
beautiful and enigmatic Deborah (Natascha McElhone) whom she at
first believes is Adam’s lover only to later find out that they
are in fact siblings. This device of an ambiguous appearance
gradually falling away to reveal a simple and unsuspected truth
is a device Kaige uses to heighten the sense of danger and
confusion attending Alice’s headlong rush into this relationship
with the shadowy Adam. But Alice is not a submissive character.
Rather she is a woman discovering sensual depths within her,
finding that revelation irresistibly intoxicating.
Many potent scenes showcase Kaige’s artistry and stick to the
memory. On that first chance encounter the camera flicks to the
flashing Stop/Go signs, and Graham begins to visibly blossom
with an inner radiance wasted in her lesser work. Another
memorable scene is of Alice naked in the snow flushed with
uncertain excitement and captured by Adam’s Polaroid, another
where he makes love to her while tightening a scarf around
Alice’s throat. She recounts in voiceover, “I gave up all
control. I let him decide when I could breathe and when I
couldn’t, and I loved it.” It’s fascinating; Adam’s alternating
cruelty and kindness transposed with Alice’s submission and
perfect trust an essential part of their relationship.
The turning point comes when Alice starts to receive anonymous
notes asking her what she really knows about Adam. She starts to
suspect that he has not been completely open with her, blocking
the profound intimacy she longs to have with him. What she finds
is creates deep doubts that Alice tries to put to rest by
sleuthing. Adam’s intense reaction to this deception culminates
in his shouting at her, “Do you sneak around because you need it
to get rougher and rougher? Is that it!?”
Fear and excitement, patience and control are held in a delicate
balance, just as they are for a mountaineer negotiating a
perilous ascent. The intricate layers of the past are as
deceptive as snow drifts hiding deep mountain crevasses, and
Killing Me Softly’s plot twists and turns back in on its
self.
The film’s only flaw is Alice’s voiceover as told to a
policeman. The device is hardly necessary. It should have been
allowed to stand on its own, especially since the policeman is
hardly sympathetic enough to allow the uninhibited expression of
the intimate details she’s giving him. Their interview seems
coldly impersonal to have any credibility and is a spurious
distraction.
Regardless, Killing Me Softly is a feat of cinematic
craftsmanship. Mesmerizing performances by Graham, Fiennes and
McElhone carry a powerful portrayal of love and obsession that
really grips hold and doesn’t let go.
