Sleeping With The Enemy

Comments (0) By Amy Taubin Tuesday, Jul 11 2000

Details

Two Women
Written and directed by Tahmineh Milani
Cinema Village
Opens July 14

It�s the Rage
Directed by James D. Stern
Written by Keith Reddin
A Silver Nitrate release
Opens July 14

Shadow Hours
Written and directed by Isaac Eaton
A CanWest Entertainment release
Opens July 14

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If nothing else, Two Women and It's the Rage are admirable for their social conscience. Shadow Hours, however, is too enthralled with its own hipness to have anything else on its mind. Balthazar Getty (looking like a more catatonic Charlie Sheen) stars as a recovering coke addict who's tempted from the straight life by Peter Weller, playing—well, there's no getting around it—the devil. Since being clean and sober involves a job pumping gas and a whining, pregnant fiancée (Rebecca Gayheart), you can't fault the guy for slipping.

The devil drives a fast car, is probably a serial killer of women, and has a free pass to most of the after-hours hot spots in L.A., including a gambling den where Russian roulette is the game of choice and an s/m parlor where you may spot performance artist Ron Athey hanging from the hardware piercing his eyebrows. Given the film's faux naïveté, even Athey's transgressive art seems reduced to mere exploitation (his own and the viewers').

Fashionably photographed by Frank Byers in the manner of too many low-budget independent films, Shadow Hours would be at least nice to look at if its near-phosphorescent greens, reds, and flesh tones weren't so blatantly ripped off from Nan Goldin. Isaac Eaton wrote and directed; he evidences little talent in either department.