The Unspeakable Act

The unspeakable act is actually referred to as the unmentionable act several times throughout the movie; I throw that factoid out just as fyi, because it's about as useful and interesting as the film.

I do wish there was a rulebook for quirky-characters-who-live-with-funny-families movies, as the first rule really should be some semblance of identifiable reality, no matter how remote.

These vague, dull, pseudo-academic people live in a bright, decorative, well-maintained house in an upscale Brooklyn neighborhood with nothing but a short dismissive voice-over claiming that nobody knows where their money comes from, and absolutely no indication that anybody in the family is capable of or interested in any kind of regular home maintenance, much less the creativity necessary for the carefully artful appearance of this particular home.

I really have nothing else to add except that in watching this, the fast-forward button is useful, as you won't miss anything.

Throughout the first 10 minutes of The Unspeakable Act I kept thinking - why is everyone so weird? Is this a low-budget slasher horror? Do they use the absurdly unnatural behavior of the characters to build suspense and create a dispiriting atmosphere? Why is the mother in the story the spitting image of every mental patient depicted on film? Why is the daughter a teenage Wednesday Adams? Alas, after 40 minutes of watching, no one got brutally murdered, except for my will to watch and indie film ever again. I though I should still give it a chance and in another 10 minutes I had forgotten it was still on.

To sum up: even the subject matter of The Unspeakable Act is not as disturbing as the movie itself. Or maybe that was what they were going for: let's make a film so terrible that even incest wouldn't measure up to it! Well, challenge completed.

From most of the reviews I've read about this movie so far, I thought reviewers were being a bit too severe over this movie. Or maybe this is due to my low expectations over it when I started watching it. I actually thought it was smart and well put together. It looks like someone like you and I took a camera and started filming around. I thought the voice over to be the most pleasant part of the movie, as it really felt like someone is telling their story. There might have been some annoying elements to it, like the cliché such as the mother who is suspected to have been a drug addict in her youth and was made to look that way, or the narrator saying over and over again that they're 'twisted' and 'weird' and 'fucked up' - which is a habit in American movies that irritates me a lot - but overall the story felt sincere and honest. The title was funny though, since, throughout the whole movie, there isn't actually any unspeakable act, but more unspeakable thoughts. Nothing goes nasty. It's a harmless, and to some extent sweet kind of incest that's being depicted. If, for the first 20 minutes, I had a hard time getting into it, I finally got into the main character and was surprised by where the movie took me. I don't think it's really worth the grade of 8/10 I gave it, but I suppose I'm just trying to make it have a better rating than The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which is the movie it reminded me of (plot, main actor...) - the Unspeakable Act appeared to me as a much less arrogant, much more subtle and honest movie, despite its few downsides.

This film will not appeal to must audiences first due to it's taboo topic and secondly it's slow pacing and lack of a driving plot. But the films overall message does slowly come through for a satisfactory conclusion.

Through many silent long shots(plus the occasional voice over) we see the life of Jackie told mostly in the in between of normal life as she struggles to deal with her unspeakable act. Which is the act of loving and desiring her older brother. He does not share her physical desires so though close, their unusual relationship remains strained.

The Unspeakable Act is a movie that shows the struggles of a young girl made all the harder by the cultural taboo surrounding her feelings. She fights against the reality of adult life but inadvertently comes to accept the hard truths of her situation. Although you may not be able to identify with Jackie's situation, the film holds you in such a way that you can understand and feel for this conflicted character. Her story is so sincere that it makes you question if what is different is truly wrong

i highly recommend this film for people who enjoy a complex story that makes you think and doesn't give you the easy answers.