Nicole Kassell (2004)
The kind of film that is praised as ‘brave’ because of what it’s about – in this case, paedophilia – but which is actually dreary and shallow. Walter (Kevin Bacon) is a molester of young girls, just released from prison. He gets a job in a lumber mill. He had been a craftsman in wood: quite early on in the film, his estranged sister returns the table Walter made for her as a wedding present. The sister’s husband (Benjamin Bratt) is alone among Walter’s family in continuing to like and to socialise with him. It’s never explained why Walter, who’s on supervised parole, is living in an apartment on the other side of the street from a school – except that it allows him to agonise about what to do about another paedophile, who hangs around the place trying to lure young boys into his car. Nor is the nature of Walter’s offences clear: it’s not being prurient to want to know, when he insists he ‘never hurt’ young girls, quite how aberrant a perception on his part that is.
In the title role, Kevin Bacon gives a conscientious but cautious performance that rarely goes deeper than looking ashamed and unhappy. The subject matter similarly paralyses Kyra Sedgwick, as Vicki, a tough woman co-worker at the mill, who develops a relationship with Walter. She’s lively in their early scenes: as soon as he reveals his secret, her expressions glaze over in deference to the challenging subject matter. It’s unusual to complain of too little exposition of character from scenes between a troubled film protagonist and their therapist but these exchanges in The Woodsman are evasively superficial. Once he’s developed a relationship with Vicki, it would be good to get an idea from Walter of how his being attracted to her compares with what he feels about children. The best performance comes from Hannah Pilkes, as an intelligent, eccentric child whom Walter approaches when she’s bird-watching in a deserted wood. But the major scene between them is partly vitiated by the revelation that her father is abusing her – just as Vicki was abused by her brothers. The suggestion that there’s-a-lot-of-it-about is used to avoid an exploration of the main character, which would have seemed to be the film’s raison d’être. The Woodsman is based on a play by Steven Fechter, who co-wrote the screenplay with Nicole Kassell. The imagery behind the title involves, as well as Walter’s line of work, his parole sergeant (Mos Def)’s garish invocation of the story of the wolf and Red Riding Hood.
3 May 2008
