BURNING PALMS

US, 2010, 110 minutes, Colour.
Jamie Chung, Rosamund Pike, Dylan McDermott?, Shannen Doherty, Zoe Saldana, Nick Stahl, Robert Hoffman, Paz Vega, Peter Macdissi, Anson Mount, Emily Meade, Lake Bell, Adriana Barraza.
Directed by Christopher Landon.

Burning Palms is a compendium film. It will not be to most audiences’ taste.

There are five short stories, focusing on questions of what is normal behaviour and normal attitude, a focusing on some particular taboos, especially sexual.

Christopher Landon, son of Michael Landon, is a writer-producer but this is his first film as director.

The film has a strong line-up for its cast, but with the films lasting twenty-plus minutes, they don't have such great opportunities for developing characters.

Each of the stories is set in a different part of California, Dr Shelly the psychiatrist appearing in two of them, but otherwise their having no links.

First Story: The Green-Eyed? Monster.
There is a focus on a middle-aged couple, played by Dylan McDermott? and Rosamund Pike. They are at the airport to meet his fifteen-year-old daughter (Emily Meade). The older woman feels left out when father and daughter reunite. What follows is some detailed sequences where the father and the daughter become very close, the older woman becoming very uncomfortable. There are intimations of incest but nothing particularly explicit – although most audiences will be uncomfortable with the manifestations of closeness, dancing, topless sunbathing, intimacy at home. The daughter reveals the story of her mother’s suicide – with the result that the older woman is disturbed, dances frenetically with a stranger at a nightclub, has a sexual encounter with him – and then kills herself.

Story Two: This Little Piggy.
An American and a Chinese-American? are dating. She is a serious student. She talks awkwardly about sexual relationships. She agrees to some sexual behaviour, anal sexuality – with the result that she goes progressively mad, obsessed with her finger and its smell, scrubbing it. Her friends take her to an institution, visit her, and find that she has cut off her finger.

Third Story: Buyers’ Remorse.
Two homosexual men, Anson Mount and Peter Macdissi, adopt a young black African girl on the black market. The film shows a rather stereotype picture of the two men, working at a gym, in the showers, roving eyes, their own behaviour at home. The little girl will not say anything. They call her Mahogany, buy her clothes, meet other couples, have a party with gay couples and their children. Suddenly she takes a spear and like a hunter pierces the animal. The two men take her to a psychiatrist. They finish up deciding that they cannot deal with her and take her into the woods, furnishing her with food and clothing. They adopt a dog instead.
Fourth Story: Kangaroo Court.
A woman looks after three boys who play rather brutal and deadly games. Two maids also live in the house. The young maid (Paz Vega) is devout and upset because of the death of her child. She keeps part of the umbilical cord. When it goes missing, there are accusations and upset. The worst child, the most brutal one, has mocked the maid and she has mocked him. He decides to stage a court case, with the maids, the woman looking after them (always stoned) and a gardener who doesn’t speak English to be called to account. The kangaroo court is upsetting – with the revelation that the maid killed her own child because of the jealousy of the father. At the end she hangs herself.

Story Five: Man Eater.
This is a story of rape, portrayed at the beginning of the story, with the victim (Zoe Saldana) taking the mask off the rapist and finding his wallet. She tracks him down (Nick Stahl) and then leads him on to a confrontation. She herself manifests psychological strangeness.

The cumulative effect is a bizarre impression of Los Angeles, a probing (however briefly) of some of the taboos and raising questions for the audience and their own attitudes.