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Dead Leaves review
:. Director: Constantin Werner
:. Starring: Halm Abramsky, Elizabeth Gondek
:. Running Time: 1:20
:. Year: 1998
:. Country: USA
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An indie film set in an arthouse mood, Dead Leaves follows Joey (Halm Abramsky), a young man who, after the accidental death of his beloved girlfriend Laura (Elizabeth Gondek), decides to keep her body as if she were alive.
As Joey embarks on road trip, we see him slowly falling from denial to insanity. Memories and hallucinated visions become intertwined while he unsuccessfully tries to keep her body from decomposing.
While several movies and books have approached death on a poetic note, director Constantin Werner's surrealist vision lacks beauty and a sense of purpose, which are two requisite ingredients to make a work of art. By wanting to show his story from a realistic angle, his poetry is too rough and voyeuristic for its own good, thus annihilating any lyricism.
A voice-over narrating poetry, an appealing soundtrack and a few visually haunting sequences aren't enough to disguise Dead Leaves as an art film. The result looks excessively creepy, in a more disgusting rather than provocative way. Werner has a certain talent at filming and his cast doesn't lack courage, but content-wise, I wasn't able to find any appeal in this story tinted with necrophilia.
Fred Thom
 Movie Reviews: from 1998 to 2011
Movie Reviews since 2012
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