Killing Me Softly | | Cast : | Heather Graham, Joseph Fiennes | | Director : | Kaige Chen | | Studio : | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | January 01, 2002 | | DVD Released Date : | July 15, 2003 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | Unrated | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | June 28, 2005 | | Summary | a reviewer | Content
 | Have never seen a movie I liked better. Most women looking for a man to say the things he does. The actors are beautiful, the homes are beautiful, and the city and country are beautiful to view. Love this director,and he found the best pair ot actors to play these lovers. Just wish there would be Killing Me Softly 2. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 01, 2005 | | Summary | A Softcore/Thriller - Killing Me Softly | Content
| Perhaps I got wrapped up in the sex scenes, it was easy to do but I thought this was a first rate well done soft porn movie, perhaps the best I've seen. Killing Me Softly opens a sensuous window into the highly erotic coupling and de-coupling (literally and metaphorically) of two most attractive individuals. Though this movie failed to capture the imagination of most movie reviewers, it did capture mine!
Though there are many actors in this movie, it is centered on and revolves around the trinity of Adam, Alice and Deborah (Adam's sister). Alice is a normal girl with a live in boyfriend and a good eight to five job, that is until, on the way to work one morning, she runs into Adam.
Adam (Joseph Fiennes) and Alice (Heather Graham) meet at a crosswalk, while she's waiting to cross the street to work. Their eyes lock, Adam smiles and Alice is smitten. Within two minutes, after a taxi ride to Adam's home, with animalistic urgency, our lustful pair is energetically copulating on the living room floor. Is this a courtship made in heaven? I don't think so. Alice didn't even find out his name until the next day, when she went over to a book store across the street from where she works, where she had seen him in the previous day and found out he's the subject of a book, a famous a famous mountain climber, Adam Tallis.
After a couple of penetrating sexual-therapy sessions and after dumping her dumpy live in boyfriend, Alice returns for another encore and meets Adam's sister Deborah (Natascha McElhone), who looks suspiciously like a young Jane Seymour. After some pleasant enough girlie talk she sends Alice off the Adam's real house. It seems Adam was using her flat while she was out of town.
Soon the newly free Alice moves in with Adam and their romance blossoms and they are in love but then she gets what appears to be a crank letter and that gets her thinking, what does she know about Adam and then there's that padlocked closet in his bedroom.
After, Adam saves an overwhelmed and grateful Alice from a mugger, she agrees to get hitched but even after their marriage the letters keep coming and then she finds out that Adam's girlfriend was killed in a climbing accident. All of a sudden Alice is in a panic trying to find out everything she can about the man she's married to.
SUMMARY
One has to wonder whether this is a thriller with a wildly erotic undertone woven in or a pleasantly erotic film with a suspenseful base. I think of it as the latter. The film, at one hundred minutes, seems to move quite well with no flat spots and the actors appear to be well suited for their parts. Fiennes did an excellent job of portraying a serious, intense individual with a powerful personality. One could understand why the slightly naïve, sensitive character of Alice would gravitate to the overpowering personality of Adam. Graham and McElhone also nailed their respective parts of Alice and the sister Deborah.
I also thought the director did a good job although to hear a lot of the critics, you think he failed miserably, in fact of the critics of moviedom only about twenty percent gave this movie a favorable rating overall.
CONCLUSION
Sorry I'm going to respectfully agree to disagree with the critics and reviewers. There is just too much passionate lusty sex and too much nudity to not consider this film Softcore and in comparison to the many other Softcore movies I've seen, this should be up for a Softcore Academy Award.
If you're wondering why you never saw this movie in the theater(I'm speaking to American readers), it's because after showing in theaters in Europe and elsewhere it was released directly on DVD in the states.
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| Rating | | | Date | May 02, 2005 | | Summary | Great Film, especially because of the Talent involved | Content
| Dramatic Thriller - contains nudity and some bondage/breath control.
DVD: Unrated version, DVD contains both Full-Screen & Wide-Screen. Other than the film itself, the DVD also has a Special Features section which has the film's Trailer and some other MGM trailers.
The film stars Heather Graham (as Alice; License to Drive, Boogie Nights), Joseph Fiennes (as Adam; Elizabeth, Shakespeare in Love, The Merchant of Venice), and Natascha McElhone (as Deborah; Ronin, Solaris, Laurel Canyon, TV: Revelations). The film is directed by Chen Kaige (Yellow Earth, Farewell My Concubine, Mo gik), and is based on the book by Nicci French.
The movie is about Alice and Adam falling in love, and a jealous sister. Alice and Adam instantly fall in love, and Alice hurriedly leaves her current living together relationship to move in with Adam. After a very quick courtship, they get married, but very quickly Alice begins to become suspicious about Adam's past, helped along by some comments by Adam's sister Deborah and some anonymous notes left for her. Oh, and the movie is narrated by Alice and some man (it is later revealed what that narration is about).
The movie opens with Adam up on a snowy mountain climb and Alice living with a man and noting how boring her life has become in London. Relatively quickly, Alice livens up her life when she bumps into Adam, and they both have an instant spark. Alice continues into her work building and Adam continues to a bookstore. That bookstore is selling Adam's new book, about his mountain climbing experiences that includes a death that occurred on his most recent climb. Conveniently, the bookstore was right outside Alice's office building. Eventually Alice leaves the building, spots Adam, and they get into a taxi together to go to Adam's apartment for some mid-afternoon excitement.
Rather quickly Adam and Alice marry, and rather quickly it is revealed that Adam likes to tie up, and/or control the breathing of his partners, and Alice seems to like this type of activity. Don't want to get too detailed, but Alice quickly becomes suspicious of Adam's past and future plans, and investigates some negative allegations made about Adam.
I believe that this was the director's first American film, after finding success over in Asia (I believe in China or maybe Hong Kong; he was born in Beijing China). The film flopped at the box office, and was not well received by the critics. Oddly enough, I quite enjoyed the film and after I had watched it the first time, tried to search out similar films, without luck. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 26, 2005 | | Summary | The editorial review says it all | Content
| The plot is terribly predictable and some of the dialog is laughable. Whether it's the solution to the mystery or the person who hooks up with the dumped boyfriend, if you didn't predict it you were probably asleep. If you have ever seen a Shannon Tweed movie of the soft porn type, then you've pretty much seen this movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 06, 2005 | | Summary | quickly plays itself out | Content
| at first this film seems kinda cool&then it runs into cliche Ville&never lets up. can't tell if it wants to be "9&Half Weeks" or Fatal Attraction". the film gets picked up easily midway through&loses it's coolness really fast. it should have been better. |
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