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The Canyons review – Paul Schrader's microbudget erotic thriller spits acid The Canyons review – Paul Schrader's microbudget erotic thriller spits acid
(about 14 hours later)
Paul Schrader's The Canyons has had a bad rap. This is the erotic thriller he shot with $250,000 (£150,000) raised through Kickstarter – making every cent count. It features a sulphurous script by Bret Easton Ellis, and stars the extravagantly unreliable and difficult Lindsay Lohan, with whom Schrader has now fallen out. Or perhaps it is rather that Lohan never regarded herself as having fallen in with him. The film is a pulp provocation with an eerily rancid atmosphere; it has been widely winced at by reviewers who wanted more of substance from this director. Casting porn-star James Deen in the leading role – the Patrick Bateman role, in point of fact – is perhaps a satirical in-joke at everyone's expense. The same might go for Lohan. She is pampered LA princess Tara, who has a troubled relationship with creepy rich kid Christian, in which role Deen certainly does an awful lot of porn-actor smirking and pouting, although I've seen non-porn actors do a worse job. (Michael Powell cast softcore pinup Pamela Green in his 1960 shocker Peeping Tom, though admittedly not for the lead.) When Christian suspects that Tara is having an affair with the actor in the low-budget movie he is supposedly "producing" (with his father's money), he embarks on a sinister campaign of psychological intimidation and manipulation. The film begins and ends with eloquent still shots of abandoned movie theatres; this has been interpreted as Schrader's wintry and disillusioned farewell to cinema. Yet perhaps it is an acid comment on the ruination that was always there, below the surface. There is a brilliant moment when Tara, over lunch with Christian's assistant Gina (Amanda Brooks), asks if she really, in her heart, likes the movies anyway. In LA, this is the final despair, the mortal sin. The Canyons deserves a look. Paul Schrader's The Canyons has had a bad rap. This is the erotic thriller he shot with $250,000 (£150,000) raised through Kickstarter – making every cent count. It features a sulphurous script by Bret Easton Ellis, and stars the extravagantly unreliable and difficult Lindsay Lohan, with whom Schrader has now fallen out. Or perhaps it is rather that Lohan never regarded herself as having fallen in with him. The film is a pulp provocation with an eerily rancid atmosphere; it has been widely winced at by reviewers who wanted more of substance from this director. Casting porn-star James Deen in the leading role – the Patrick Bateman role, in point of fact – is perhaps a satirical in-joke at everyone's expense. The same might go for Lohan. She is pampered LA princess Tara, who has a troubled relationship with creepy rich kid Christian, in which role Deen certainly does an awful lot of porn-actor smirking and pouting, although I've seen non-porn actors do a worse job. (Michael Powell cast softcore pinup Pamela Green in his 1960 shocker Peeping Tom, though admittedly not for the lead.)
When Christian suspects that Tara is having an affair with the actor in the low-budget movie he is supposedly "producing" (with his father's money), he embarks on a sinister campaign of psychological intimidation and manipulation. The film begins and ends with eloquent still shots of abandoned movie theatres; this has been interpreted as Schrader's wintry and disillusioned farewell to cinema. Yet perhaps it is an acid comment on the ruination that was always there, below the surface. There is a brilliant moment when Tara, over lunch with Christian's assistant Gina (Amanda Brooks), asks if she really, in her heart, likes the movies anyway. In LA, this is the final despair, the mortal sin. The Canyons deserves a look.