Quid Pro Quo.

"The first half of Quid Pro Quo is among the most jaw-dropping things I've ever seen: Who knew there was a closeted subculture of people pretending to be paraplegics?" asks David Edelstein in New York.

"With glamorous Old Hollywood blond locks and a high heels-assisted statuesque figure that nicely clash with her paraplegic fantasies, [Vera] Farmiga is enthralling, her unhinged expressions—and ability to ooze sexuality while revealing intimate, off-the-wall truths about herself—lending the proceedings a beguiling, erotically charged sense of unease," writes Nick Schager in Slant. "When Farmiga isn't on screen, however, Quid Pro Quo goes limp."

Updated through 6/16.

"Farmiga is captivating," agrees Jean Oppenheimer in the Voice, "[Nick] Stahl less so - although a bigger problem is writer/director Carlos Brooks's script, which sets up one story, then shifts gears into something more personal and psychologically specific. That's normally a plus, deepening the viewer's sense of involvement, but the transition here is bumpy and, ultimately, unconvincing."

Online listening tip. The IFC's Matt Singer and Alison Willmore "examine how people with physical disabilities have been portrayed in movies, from Freaks to My Left Foot to Rory O'Shea Was Here, and discuss whether actors playing disabled characters is the new blackface."

Update: Andrew Sarris in the New York Observer:

The ambitious indirection of the film's visual style is reflected in the director's own comment on the direction of his cast: "I told the actors in rehearsal to think of the story as unfolding entirely within that moment that transpires between deep sleep and wakefulness. So from the earliest rehearsals and creative discussions and final sound design, we approached the film within that framework - that the film itself should be experienced as a kind of dream. Even to the extent that we avoided the usual overtly 'dreamy' filmmaking and editing tricks - in favor of a straightforward style that would, like an actual dream, invite you to perceive it as real."

Quid Pro Quo thereby seems to be the latest attempt to awaken us all from more than a century of dreamlike voyeurism at the temples of the cinema so that we can look more closely at the mechanics of our addiction.

Update, 6/12: "Castrated twice in Sin City, stabbed and beaten to death in Bully, shot in the face in In the Bedroom, and most recently a mentally abused emotional adolescent in this year's Sleepwalking, Nick Stahl is steadily carving out a niche for himself as the whipping boy of contemporary American independent cinema," notes Leo Goldsmith at indieWIRE. "For good or ill, Carlos Brooks's debut feature Quid Pro Quo allows Stahl to graduate from this bit of typecasting, making him less the passive recipient of violence, and more one who endures in its aftermath." Ultimately, the film "isn't quite deep enough to be offensive."

Updates, 6/13: "[T]his small, intensely acted film is a psychological detective story that suggests a boutique version of David Cronenberg's Crash or David Fincher's Fight Club, but it eventually runs out of courage," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

"Gorgeously shot by Michael McDonough, Quid Pro Quo belies its modest budget with a glossy, burnished look that lifts the material into another realm," writes Carina Chocano in the Los Angeles Times. "There's something liquid and haunting about the look of the film that adds to the feeling that what we're watching isn't real, and yet it easily avoids the clichés of the 'dreamlike' aesthetic.... Brooks and his actors manage to render an involving and thoughtful story from some pretty dubious material."

"Brooks plunges into the thick of a largely unfamiliar subculture in Quid Pro Quo, but the journey involves a series of well-telegraphed twists and turns - one of them, a bit of fantasy involving a pair of magic shoes, at odds with the tone of the rest of the film," writes Keith Phipps at the AV Club.

The IFC's Matt Singer talks with Brooks.

Update, 6/16: Erich Kuersten at Bright Lights After Dark on Farmiga: "This girl is the James Dean of our time."

Posted by dwhudson at June 11, 2008 2:18 AM