Wound

The film festival program says that:

Wound is the angry by-product of being bored by the utterly predictable banality of our mainstream movies

The warning bells should have rung louder. This is code for "Wound is a surreal movie". Unfortunately I have a checkered history with surreal movies. I either enjoy them or am confused, frustrated and bored by them - nothing in between.

It is obvious that Kate O’Rourke (who plays Sue) acted her heart out in this movie. She is in almost every scene and displaying a range of extreme emotions in most of them. It feels exhausting just to watch her. The same way it was exhausting to watch the heroine of Run, Lola, Run running for 90 minutes. Kate certainly deserves recognition for her acting in Wound. Te Kaea Beri, who plays Tanya the sulky, silently raging teenager does good job too. I thought that the dolls were the next best characters after Sue and Tanya.

There is plenty of violence and even more symbolism which suits a film about a sexually abused and hence mentally ill woman with revenge fantasies. In my view many of the scenes could have been jumbled up and played in a different order or left out all together without distracting from the story or experience. If a film maker leaves too much up to the viewer they are no longer telling a story, but proving some images which the viewer can interpret any way they like or more likely give up trying to interpret. I suspect that I should make greater efforts to avoid surreal films, as more often than not I don't enjoy them.

Mental illness is probably good subject for a surreal movie and if you like disturbing images and things that don't make sense then by all means go and see Wound, it is well acted and full of symbolism and other craziness.

Ian's rating 1.5/5