‘This Tempting Madness’ Torments The Unreliable Heroine With Unusual Degrees Of Pain And Suffering

 

This Tempting Madness film poster.

Based on a jarring true story, This Tempting Madness opens on Mia dramatically falling. The back of her body suspends in a slow moving arc towards a terrifying bottom, her voluminous hot orange dress spreading out its lush folds in flowery fashion, powerless to cushion against the devastating plight. Without warning, her vulnerable front faces the full brunt of impact. She screams “no!” as sounds of her cracking bones strike against surface after surface, sending bloodcurdling chills down the apprehensive watcher’s spine. Was she violently pushed or had she accidentally lost footing and tripped? Is it not any wonder that she manages to miraculously cheat certain death?

However, Mia surviving these cataclysmic bodily injuries isn’t the sole surprise. Her memory exists in startling fragments that cause ruptured behavioral changes— severe mood swings coming from somewhere deep within. Moments contain a kind, sweet wife and attentive mother standing by her husband Jake’s side. Others showcase an ambitious woman reaping the benefits of her privileged upbringing, either callously putting an often anxious Jake on edge or threatening anyone in her vicinity with intended violence.

Mia’s brother Ajay (Suraj Sharma) seems to be her only friend. DP: Andrew Davis.

Mia’s tied to her family, primarily Ajay, her older brother, a constant, loyal presence at her side. Every time she awakens, pained and grinding teeth, Ajay is there assuring her that she’ll be alright. Yet, Mia only prioritizes Jake. Despite having a damaged mind struggling to grasp normality, Mia becomes a full out menace, crying, whining, and screaming about Jake, believing wholeheartedly in an unproven innocence. 

Furthermore, in a world ruled by patriarchal cruelty, Mia’s mental capacities dissolve into a delusional territory where men can do no wrong. Has all such histories been replaced by the overwhelming compulsion to remain at a husband’s side? Does she not realize that their behaviors alter like clockwork more often than not? An irrational, gravely injured Mia appears to be overcompensating for a happily ever after romance as her own flashbacks give hints that she and Jake do not exemplify a love match. Their chilly relationship lacks warmth and affection including a cold Mia pleasuring herself with a scowling Jake watching. Somehow a daughter was created from this arrangement.  

The film blends mystery, thriller, and medical horror, the best parts navigating through Mia’s reset after trauma, the ways that words and sounds trigger reactions that sometimes frighten her family. The young woman has much to process—being in considerable pain and danger, wearing a metal brace to hold up her chin, prone to excess bleeding as her deranged husband blames her for his own failings. Jake seems to reserve a certain hatred for Mia and her family, has likely hated her for quite some time and tries to convince Mia that the incident was her fault.  

  

Although the story begins on a descent, it ends by arousing more questions than generating any real answers. Were we supposed to root for a woman’s revenge on her abusive husband or a broken, depressed man desperate to escape a family obsessed with success? 

 

Mia finally sees her man in jail and tells him straight up that she believes in his innocence. DP: Andrew Davis.

This Tempting Madness had been on the watchlist since last year’s announcement and hot orange dress scene. Unfortunately, the film proved to be even more limited in theater screenings than Me, You, and Tuscany and Is God Is. No nearby major outlets or small art houses played it. The neon color saturations and unique sound design—among the film’s most solid strengths— would have alone enhanced this cinematic experience. The first time viewing on an iPad robbed an allowance of a big screen and surround speakers. Independent films with a raw, stark edge face greater challenges, especially when helmed by new women filmmakers. Sadly, that struggle will continue if they seek directing a second picture, typically another barrier for them to break through. 

With a certified fresh Rotten Tomatoes seventy-seven percent score, This Tempting Madness has its highlights. Director/co-writer Jennifer Montgomery’s feature-length debut spins an unusual narrative whilst unearthing a stellar performance out of her lead actress Simone Ashley. Cinematographer and co-writer Andrew Davis’s skilled camera work includes multiple point of views on Mia’s fall and the spectacular underwater visuals. Rebekka Karijord’s music composition that understands the complications necessary to fit scene moods. Thus, it must be the actor’s dream of having a physically demanding part whilst demonstrating the many emotional facets that Mia expresses throughout— disorientation, frustration, rage, humility, grace, genuine and forced happiness. Ashley’s complexity exhibits a broad range of psychological depths just by sheer body language. Her tenacious ability to showcase the necessary talents to reveal her character’s unreliable narrative proves what we have been saying all along in regards to her bare presence in the last few seasons of Bridgerton, her own starring season two appearance limited her character’s overall arc and voice. Suraj Sharma (star of Ang Lee’s Oscar winning triumph Life of Pi) also has a commendable supporting role as Ajay, a character who sticks so close to his sister and seems to be hiding his own dirt. 

Mia gives Hitchcockian psycho energy as she wields a knife for self-defense. DP: Andrew Davis.

This Tempting Madness is a must see for its calculated build up of eerie atmospheric tension in the realms of Mia’s mind, the pushes and pulls that affect an off balanced psyche. 

‘The Ice Storm,’ Reflecting On Ang Lee’s Artic Drama

 

The Ice Storm film poster. 

“The meaning of Fantastic Four was that a family is like your own personal anti-matter. Your family is the void you emerge from. And the place you return to when you die.”—Paul Hood contemplating on life whilst reading Fantastic Four Issue #141 The End of The Fantastic Four 

Based on Rick Moody’s novel, the characters in The Ice Storm are as insufferably cold and frigid as the title metaphorically implies. Set between New Canaan, Connecticut and New York City, two middle-class, white suburbia families cross boundaries with each other. These are privileged people— middle aged adults “raising” children who are clearly interested in adult actions— mainly sex, drugs, and alcohol. 

The film opens on Paul’s train. 

And it has stopped operating due to inclement weather.

Fresh off the highs of Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, I first watched Ang Lee’s icy classic twenty years ago on VHS with the geeky hope of Tobey Maguire and Elijah Wood sharing scenes together. They don’t. Yet their characters are eerily similar. Paul Hood is an awkward intellectual who philosophizes life through a comic book perspective and smokes pot with his girl stealing roommate, Francis Davenport (played by David Krumholtz). Mikey Carver is a quiet eccentric nerd who is bad at sports and obsessed with molecular science and Paul’s sharp sister younger Wendy. Furthermore, Mikey’s relationship with his father Jim is frosty as opposed to Paul’s stiffly relaxed relationship with Ben. 

Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd) and Mikey (Elijah Wood) serve guests in aprons at their parents’ dinner and later sneakily drink wine in the kitchen. The adults just never seem to watch their children’s behavior. 

On the surface, the Carvers and the Hoods appear civil to each other. Their marriages, however, are charades put on for the neighbors. Janey and her husband Jim Carver have lost the spark between them— likely due to his constant travels and bed “performance” capabilities. Elena no longer desires to be intimate with her husband Ben Hood. 

Elena (Joan Allen, right) offers to wash the dishes, but Janey (Sigourney Weather, left) nearly blows her head off with her declinations. Afterwards, she plays calm and collected, reasserting her “no” with “it’s quite alright.”

One of the most incredible cropping is this scene of observing retired servants Mikey (Elijah Wood) and Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd) watching the adults drinking. 

While Elena is extremely timid with Ben, Elena and Wendy do not have the closest mother/daughter relationship either. In Wendy’s mind, Elena represents the rebellious notion, “you are my mother, but I don’t have to like you or be like you.” Wendy is an outspoken political wildfire, a shoplifter, and smoker all at the age of fourteen. And she is very, very interested in the male body in an imperviously wicked way. Polar opposite Elena wants to mimic her daughter— obtaining her lost youth, her lost pleasure. She seems a damaged product of her time— trapped in an unhappy marriage which likely happened at a young age. Yet Elena’s dreamy perception of Wendy is far from who Wendy truly is. 

Red coated Wendy Hood (Christina Ricci) through Elena’s eyes— a free spirited girl who can do anything, be anything. 

But in reality, Wendy is on her way to steal snack cakes…

The Ice Storm hits on heavy territory that may be too sensitive for viewers, especially in the frank and bizarre scenarios involving overtly curious children. By clinically revealing the natural inclination to explore the human body, the film discloses on the deepest, darkest intimate secrets of the young psyche. When Mikey and Wendy are kissing, they are not embracing or touching each other. They are joined only by their experimenting lips, merely approaching the science of this act without the emotional attachment. 

Close up on Mikey and Wendy’s outdoors make out session.

The wide shot angle. 

On the other hand, the unbalanced Sandy Carver— the most terrifying of the children— has the potential to become a vicious grownup. He already has this fixated quality about him— a fixation on violence and an unhinged fixation to Wendy. He appears to be the epitome of danger which is precisely what draws Wendy on in. They both have an unhealthy taste for walking down the wrong tracks. 

Sandy (Adam Hann-Byrd) aims his army soldier at the retreating Wendy. Wendy will later undress the soldier. 

Lines are drawn and some are deliberately trying to cross them. Janey is having sex with Ben, but Ben needs the soundboard aspect too. Predatory Wendy is the center of a strangely demented triangle— two brothers— a secret unboyfriend and a toy to play with. An envious Paul is trying to get a rich New York classmate’s attention, but uses drugs in a ruthless tactic. The teens are too corrupt to make positive choices (and it takes Paul a long while to leave a rape-y situation) and the adults are invested in their own psychological, midlife crises to offer parental guidance. Without such aide, the young ones are left alone raging on hormones and accessible alcohol. Obviously, they all need therapy. 

Janey and Ben are both deprived. 

Bored Janey barely notices what Mikey and Sandy are up to. Between ironically reading Phillip Roth’s When She Was Good (a novel about a severely moral woman), alone with an always traveling Jim, and seeking sexual pleasures from around the neighborhood, Janey is the definition of absent housewife. She tries to assert some authority over the youth though. When Janey spies Sandy blowing up aircrafts with dynamite or Wendy taking advantage of Sandy in her own bathroom, Janey tries to set them both straight on their unlawful behaviors— albeit unsuccessfully. 

Elena (Joan Allen) and Jim (Jamey Sheridan) are the last ones left in the key party house. 

During the weather warning, the local key party builds the climax. Everyone is so enthusiastic for the open relationship phenomenon that a woman even brings her son as her date. A man disgustingly wishes people brought their daughters too. There is no real shame, no ostracizing of this convoluted behavior. Maybe New Canaan residents are all sex crazed and must turn to each other in a nefarious Mister Rogers Neighborhood way. Still, Elena—who has easily figured out Ben and Janey’s affair—reluctantly attends something not in her repressed nature. Like a victorious cougar, Janey pulls out the son’s key and goes off wherever much to the embarrassment of Jim, Ben, and Elena. 

The morning after.

The Ice Storm is a complicated favorite for its compelling, abrasive narrative. The cast is perfect too— Sigourney Weaver, Joan Allen, and Kevin Kline along with Elijah Wood and Tobey Maguire. Another scenic pleasure included Christina Ricci whose Wendy mirrors her earlier Wednesday Adams in The Addams Family. Ang Lee’s daring direction and Frederick Elmes picturesque cinematography combines vividly well to the haunting music Mychael Danna composed. This here is real quality cinema. Heavy yet beautifully made.   

In a light afternoon, Ben (Kevin Kline) picks up Wendy (Christina Ricci) as though she were a child and not a blossoming teenager. 

In the late night, Ben (Kevin Kline) carries Mikey (Elijah Wood) to his car.

The man carrying a red coated child has heartbreaking symmetry. In one moment, Ben holds Wendy away from the Carvers house not just because her feet are cold. Ben naively believes that by shielding his daughter away from the dangers that boys like Mikey represent, that he could protect her innocence— unknowing that that concept is long lost. Ben had earlier given Paul a delayed “birds and bees” talk yet scolded Mikey for fooling around with Wendy. There is celebration for a father’s son to sow wild oats early on, but a daughter remains virtuous in a father’s eyes. By the end, Ben finds Mikey lying face down in a red bubble coat and lifts the cold body of the very boy he blasted. It delivers a tragic parallel between Mikey and Paul— these teenage boys so alike yet never share a moment together—that Mikey reminds Ben of Paul and doesn't necessarily need to voice the grievance aloud. 

Paul (Tobey Maguire) boarding off the train with his Fantastic Four comic, oblivious to the befallen.  

With a soft, clandestine tone surrounded in tremulous ice and whispering wood, The Ice Storm is a startling, eye-opening drama that dissects the roots of repression and sexual awakening. The harrowing credits roll on the sad underlying fact that when death comes, the dying have no choice (broken or not) but to return to the place they came from.