i must have seen a different film!!

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Art movies often resemble sexploitation films with plusher production values, and the elegantly depraved Walken & Mirren in 'The Comfort of Strangers' strongly recall Bowie & Deneuve in 'The Hunger'. Some of the set pieces like Walken's picture gallery of photos of Rupert Everett could have come straight from an Italian 'giallo' of the seventies; while the conclusion would have been 'rationalised' by Jesús Franco as a vampiric rite rather than as the culmination of homoerotic infatuation.

I had never heard of this film before I stumbled across it one evening. I am a big fan of Christopher Walken and noticed that Helen Mirren was in it too. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson also star - so I assumed (wrongly) this would be worth watching.It's not.Set in Venice, we see a strained relationship between Everett and Richardson as a holidaying couple. They meet Walken one evening as they were looking for a bar, they have some drinks, Walken invites them to stay at his house and there they meet Mirren. I could elaborate more and even give the ending away (an ending that could not come soon enough) but even that would be a waste of time.I cannot even explain the plot because it makes no sense. A bit like the dialogue too. Everett spends the whole time either walking (semi-bounding if you ask me - where did he learn to walk like that?) around with one hand in his pocket looking totally bored with everything or talking cack-handed, pompous rubbish. Richardson looks like she'd rather suck on a bag of lemons than be in this film and as for Mirren and Walken - why they ever signed up at all is beyond me. The dialogue is so bad - it has to be heard to be believed. One such example is Everett asks why Walken was secretly taking pictures of him before they met. Walken answers: "See that Barber Shop. My grandfather went to that Barber shop. My father went to that barber shop. I go to that barber shop." Then he turns to look at an island in the distance and says "See over there? That's Cemetery Island." Does a short snort and walks off screen - scene over. What????This is a waste of time, energy, acting talent, anything else you want to throw in. Not worth watching even if you were given a free giant Pizza and a pint of Peroni to add to the Italian ambiance.I would have given this film 0/10 if there was an option. Unfortunately, there wasn't. 1/10. Avoid like the plague.

One naturally expects nothing less than that when one watches a Harold Pinter screenplay turned into a film. If you are not familiar with Pinter's plays then you might be with his screenplays The Servant (1963), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981) and Sleuth (2007). Pinter's most prominent trademark is his ability to render his screenplay adaptations completely independent of their original text. In other words, his Pinterisque touch does not transform but rather creates anew.The Comfort of Strangers (1990) is based on the Ian McEwan's novel of the same name. Basically, the story is about Colin and Mary, a young couple who travel to Venice on a vacation to think about their future together. In Venice, they encounter an older couple, Robert and Caroline, who eventually turn their vacation and relationship upside down. I do not want to rant about how different Pinter's screenplay is from McEwan's novel. This is a closed deal. What strikes me as supremely beautiful is how Pinter manages to bring to light such psychological intensity and incendiary conflicts using the subtlest language imagined. It is almost like watching poetry in motion if that makes any sense.It is out of the question that Pinter would not have accomplished that effect without Paul Schrader's exquisite talent, who is a screenwriter himself by the way (does Taxi Driver and Raging Bull ring a bell?). Schrader succeeds in giving Pinter's world the required mystical substance; the long and medium shots of the charming Venice, the camera pauses, the movement of actors, the choice of subliminal music… it all contributes to creating this metaphysical atmosphere felt only in classic paintings. Have you noticed the similarity between shots of Mary and Colin in bed and the paintings adoring the walls of Robert's apartment?… You're welcome.The gender and power conflict that takes place in this kind of world is all symbolic and is expressed in allusions rather than direct words. Colin, played to good effect by Rupert Everett, is meant to be beautiful in picturesque way akin to that of Greek statues. His beautiful masculinity is to be contrasted with Robert's (played by the genius Christopher Walken) grotesque masculinity. Same can be said about Mary (Natasha Richardson) and Caroline (Helen Mirren) who represents two different aspects of femininity: passivity and servitude. The encounter between the young couple and their older counterparts might seem a little bit awkward in realistic narrative terms. Like seriously, who would go sleep at a strangers' house and let them take their clothes away? However, in symbolic terms, this confrontation is necessary to highlight the gender fluidity and power conflict in any relationship. Robert and Caroline are the distorted mirror that Colin and Mary see themselves into. They see the dark side of who they are and their future demise. The image they see in the mirror terrifies them and subconsciously pushes them to change to the opposite – to exchange roles. Colin sees in Robert the extreme end of masculinity and power he has been trying to practice on Mary. He becomes threatened and retreats to his beautiful, feminine self (something that Caroline and later Mary keeps referring to). Similarly, Mary sees in Caroline the extreme end of her docility and indecisiveness. She also becomes threatened and embraces her masculine self. This subversion of roles is quite evident in Colin and Mary's later sexual encounters and fantasies.Whether this change was necessary or not and whether it has been brought about by the wrong catalyst (Robert and Caroline) or not are all questions Pinter leaves us with to ponder on. I do not care about the answers of those questions as much as I care about how enlightening and fascination watching this film has been.

I bought this in a set marked as 'Triple Feature Romance'. I can't imagine the morbid mind that would consider this movie a romance! I don't think I would have liked it even if I hadn't been expecting an undemanding love story, but then I probably wouldn't have watched it if it had been in a set with an accurate label. Certainly there is sex, even love, mostly of a very odd, sick type, but the obsession that leads a couple to murder the unwitting object of their sexual fantasies goes beyond the mere quirkiness of BDSM and stalking into a truly surreal madness. Yes, the scenery is nice, but I'm not sure Colin is quite so beautiful as to cause such fascination at first sight from a distance, though the obsessive couple are frighteningly believable. *shudder* But I'm not sure I can believe the two would be so stupid as to return to the apartment of a man they already have good reason to feel uneasy about! Going there in the first place was odd enough after their experience with him the night before.Yuck!