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| India (Mia Wasikowska) confronts her past in Stoker. |
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Stoker. Written by Wentworth Miller & Erin Cressida
Wilson. Directed by Chan-Wook Park.
Where you come from doesn’t
necessarily define who you are, but it helps. Case in point: Chan-Wook Park’s Stoker, a psycho-sexual thriller that
follows in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943). I haven’t seen any of Korean-born Park’s
other films, but I’m told they are erotic and stylized, with scissors usually
featured as instruments of murder. Sure enough, the shears are unsheathed in Stoker,
as are Park’s penchants for fancy, computer-assisted transitions. What’s wrong
with this film has less to do with what it has than what it lacks.
Like Shadow of a Doubt, Stoker
is about a young woman (Mia Wasikowska) who is discomfited by the arrival of a long-lost
relative. Here, uncle Charlie (Matthew Goode) comes to live with India and her
mother (Nicole Kidman) after the accidental death of her father (Dermot
Mulroney). Charlie comes on as worldly and dripping with erotic menace, like a
sexualized version of her missing father. He’s also strangely solicitous of the
approval of his niece. India soon discovers that Uncle Charlie isn’t what he
seems, though what she does with that knowledge is more bizarre and perverse
than Hitchcock could have gotten away with in ‘43.
One can’t fault Park for his classic
inspiration. (According to IMDB, he decided to make films after seeing Vertigo.) Nor is his cast---with
Wasikowska and Kidman filling in after Carey Mulligan and Jodie Foster left the
project—anything like second-string. He dresses up Wasikowska a bit too much
like Wednesday from The Addams Family,
or perhaps more to the point, like a Korean schoolgirl. And sure, Goode’s
teasing grin is creepy in the wrong way, like a man who is positive he can talk
a mother and daughter into a kinky threesome. There’s a tone of indefinite
dread that gets monotonous, but at least it’s consistent.
The problem with Stoker is a general emptiness at its core. Park, who was born and
educated in South Korea, has no particular feel for the affluent Connecticut
places and people he depicts here. In apparent compensation, he presents it as
precious and over-designed, a version of American life much like a Restoration
Hardware catalog. I was tempted to watch the credits for the order numbers.
How could it have been otherwise? Foreign directors are often brought on to Hollywood
projects because they’re expected to bring some visionary quality with them.
But aside from how to dance Gangnam style, nobody would expect some guy
who spent most of his life in Bridgeport or Willimantic to have any insight
into the psychosexual mores of Pyeongchang-dong
district in Jongno-gu,
South Korea. We might expect such a feat only if we see this American life as
“default” culture, as something universally accessible. Trouble is, US culture—including
US sexual culture—is every bit as
idiosyncratic as anyplace else’s. And some things don’t translate easily.
©
2013 Nicholas Nicastro
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