Suspension of Disbelief (1 Star)

Within 10 minutes of watching the film I was feeling like I should turn it off. It was so bad in an annoying way. I gritted my teeth and told myself I should give it a chance. After all, it stars the wonderful German actor Sebastian Koch in one of his few English language roles. So I sat to the end of the 112 minutes, and when it got to the end I regretted it. That's two hours of my life that I'll never get back.

The plot itself is interesting. It's the realisation that's at fault. Sebastian Koch plays Martin Jones, a successful German scriptwriter who lives in London. He also makes money teaching scriptwriting to film students.

One day he has an argument with his wife. She walks out of the door and is never seen again. At first it's thought that she's just left him, but after 15 years there's still no contact, so it's assumed she's dead. Now Martin has written the screenplay for a film called "Suspension of Disbelief", which deals indirectly with his wife's disappearance, suggesting that she was murdered by being pushed into a river. The film's two main stars are a French actress called Angelique and Martin's 25-year-old daughter Sarah.

After a party at Martin's house Angelique is found dead in a river. Obviously that makes Martin the main suspect and re-opens the case of his wife's disappearance. The detective who's sent to interview Martin is a hobby scriptwriter and gives Martin his first screenplay to read, a murder mystery called "Main Suspect". The detective seems more interested in getting Martin's opinion on his script than investigating the case. When Martin tells him after a few days that the script is awful and he should stick to police work the detective has a heart attack and dies.

In another twist, Angelique's identical twin sister Therese arrives in London for the funeral. (Didn't I just see an identical twin in "Napoli Velata"? "Suspension of Belief" was made six years earlier, so who's copying the idea of a murder victim having an identical twin?) Therese is allowed to live in Martin's house for a few days, which turns into a few weeks. First Therese seduces Martin, then she seduces Sarah, then she takes over her sister's role in the film.

There are surreal scenes within the film. When Therese reads the script she finds that it's describing her reading the script. The phone even interrupts her, which is what happens in the script. Is it the script of the film being made in the film or the real film itself? That's not clear.

The director even mentioned this to Angelique when she asked him to explain why she had to kiss Sarah after killing a man:

"What we're gonna do is we're trying to deconstruct the cliché of film noir within the sense of the post-modernistic look of Humphrey Bogart's noir films within the cliché. Black, white, red. Alright? Two women, sexual, empowered, feministic. This is the film within the film within the film of the script. Do you understand?"

No, I don't understand. I don't think anyone does. Sadly, I think this is the intention of the real film itself.

I must apologise if my description of the plot makes the film sound like a brilliant avant-garde opus similar to Charlie Kaufman's films. It isn't. It's pompous and overbearing. Long periods of absolute silence are supposed to be artistic, but all they did was make me check my loudspeakers were working. The picture occasionally fades from colour into black and white to emphasise the film noir aspects, but this is so clumsy that it's laughable. Worst of all is that the film is framed by a lesson in Martin's scriptwriting class, with students asking questions pertaining to what's happening. Every 10 to 15 minutes a word appears on the screen that is applicable to scriptwriting, together with its definition.

This is probably the worst film I've ever seen. It tries so hard to be intellectual, but the end result is annoying. I forgot to mention, the film even begins with a quote from Carl Jung to explain why we enjoy films. We need a second quote to explain why we don't enjoy "Suspension of Disbelief".

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