Wristcutters - A Love Story
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Patrick Fugit, Shannyn Sossamon, Tom WaitsBrand: Lions Gate
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-03-25
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Lions Gate
Movie Reviews of Wristcutters - A Love Story
Movie Review: Amor e morte
Summary: 5 Stars
Most romantic comedies take place in... you know, the world of the living. They rarely star dead people. And not suicides, either.
But "Wristcutters: A Love Story" is not going to be tied down by that. This delicious, dark little cult film is about people who have committed suicide, and are now stuck in a limbo zone that is just like the living world, but less appealing. It's also dark, funny and poignant -- everything you want in a very original little indie movie.
Because of a breakup, Zia (Patrick Fugit) has decided that life is no longer worth living. He cleans his house, slits his wrists -- and finds himself in a strange twilight-zone with no sunshine, smiles, or appetizing food, and entirely populated by suicides -- think a Midwestern small town, but more depressing. He eventually gets a job, a nasty roommate, and befriends Eugene (Shea Whigham) a likably bombastic Russian rocker.
But then Zia learns from a new suicide that his girlfriend, Desiree (Leslie Bibb) has also offed herself. So he and Eugene bundle into Eugene's horrible old car, and start a road trip to find her -- picking up the pretty, feisty Mikal (Shannyn Sossamon), who says she's been placed there mistakenly. The odd trio rattles through this suicide world, until they stumble across a strange camp in the wilderness...
I first heard about "Wristcutters" a long while ago, on myspace -- but in the months that followed, it just sort of floated in a limbo of its own. Pretty frustrating, but Goran Dukic actually makes it worth waiting for -- it's a quirky and dark indie comedy, a tragedy, and a love story all in one.
As you can probably guess, the movie's main message is that you should live a life worth enjoying, and love someone worth loving. Yeah, the core of it is a guy who loses the girl, kills himself, tries to regain the girl, and falls in love with the worthier choice -- all while wondering if love is still possible for those whose hearts have stopped.
But that potentially soppy message is wrapped up in clever little quirks in Wristcutterville (Zia works at "Kamikaze Pizza") or the various deaths of the people who live there (Eugene electrocuted himself to get the crowd to pay attention). It feels pleasantly, wistfully warped -- both with macabre humour (the hole-in-the-head cop) and delicious dialogue ("I'm not going out tonight. It just makes me depressed." "So, what you gonna do? Kill yourself?").
And you gotta admit, this postmodern Purgatorio is an interesting concept -- it's portrayed with a sort of low-budget magical realism. Suicide wounds, pale faces, bleak landscape, and "Love Will Tear Us Apart" is a popular tune. It's pretty fitting that the place for those who have given up hope is a place where hope and joy are nonexistant.
It also has a very pleasant, poignant ending -- yeah, it seems like a bit of a cop-out, but somehow by the time we got there, I didn't mind. It ties in with the lesson of the movie, and the poignant little love between Zia and Mikal.
Fugit is a likably confused, sweet character who is just a bit dense, since it takes him awhile to figure out what a great, funny girl Mikal is. And Whigham -- whose character was partly based on Gogol Bordello's Eugene Hutz -- rules all the scenes he's in, as one of the few suicides who still has his vitality, libido and humour intact ("Everyone knows that man in back does not have c**k").
Sad, quirky and poignant, "Wristcutters: A Love Story" is an offbeat love/road-trip movie in the land of suicides -- it's a brilliantly warped little cult movie, and definitely worth seeing.
Summary of Wristcutters - A Love Story
WRISTCUTTERS:LOVE STORY - DVD MovieThe world might have many people unhappy enough to commit suicide. But the quirky and imaginative Wristcutters: A Love Story suggests there?s a special place beyond this one for those who take their own lives, and it isn?t very pretty. Not that anything particularly bad takes place; it?s just that not very much happens at all. Director Goran Dukic, adapting a short story by Etgar Keret, presents an afterlife for those who kill themselves that looks pretty dreary, full of broken-down cars rotting on roadsides, roommates obsessed with cottage cheese, cops who don?t inspire a lot of confidence, and messianic losers promising paradise if only the dead, well, commit suicide all over again. Into the mucky mediocrity comes Zia (Patrick Fugit), a nice young man who opens his veins and ends up in this limbo for losers. There, he takes a menial job, finds an unlikely friend in Eugene (Shea Whigham), a laconic Russian rocker, and meets apathetic girls in a lousy bar. The monotony of it all is broken up, finally, when Zia gets word that his girlfriend back on the mortal plane also killed herself, prompting him to take Eugene on the road in search of her. Naturally, the trip becomes a journey in unexpected new directions and new hope (particularly when a comely hitchhiker, played by Shannyn Sossamon, jumps aboard), though a diversion at a camp for miracles run by an eccentric (Tom Waits) adds a lot of color. Full of low-key wit and intentionally low-rent surprises, Wristcutters is a vision of the persistence of the human heart even in the most somber circumstances. --Tom Keogh
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