Close My Eyes

Hmmmm. It's just the teensiest bit difficult to view incest sympathetically, yet that's what British playwright/director Poliakoff asks us to do. Reeves and Owen play a brother and sister who were separated when their parents divorced and so spend their teenage years apart. When they come together again their meetings are increasingly sexually charged until the unthinkable happens. Before this momentous event, Owen was a feckless young architect on the make in every way -- big building projects and young women occupying his time. But something, we don't know what, makes him change and he takes a job at an environmental watchdog agency and sleeps with his sister. For her part, Reeves goes from deep despair when one lover leaves to idyllic discontent when she marries an investment advisor played with typical savoir faire by Rickman (Die Hard, Robin Hood). In the course of their affair, Owen becomes obsessive while Reeves is manipulative then sensible -- after all, she's the one with a reasonably good marriage to a very rich man. It's the seduction scene that's most painful to watch as Reeves toys with Owen, then says "Stop me." The whole mess teeters briefly on the edge of sanity when Owen discovers his co-worker is ill with AIDS and, at the same time, a distraught Rickman confides in Owen his fears about his wife's infidelity. Just for a moment it seems that a point about the responsibilties of love, sex and friendship, is about to be made, but as Owen careens off into self-pity and obsession, something darker happens. AIDS as the result of unprotected sex is not exactly equated with incest, but it comes dangerously close. It's not malice on Poliakoff's part; it's lack of control. And it is a lack of control that characterizes this movie. The characters spend so much of their screen time in guilty self-castigation, that it's not a pleasant experience for us. If anyone could save it, it is the riveting Rickman, but his bravest efforts come too late. "Stop me," Reeves says. We would if we could.