Irresistible

Once you start watching this film you have to see it through to the end. It draws you in with a very strange tale which twists and turns and keeps you routed to the screen. The acting from the 3 main characters is superb. Emily Blunt's performance is absolutely stunning as the suspected source of Susan Sarandon's character's concerns and Sam Neill's character's attention. No spoilers!

Watch and see. My ideal rating would be 6.5/10

With a messy script and quite tedious pacing, this film doesn't really work. Sam Neill and Susan Sarandon do their best with desperately underwritten parts and Emily Blunt feels at times wasted in the role and at other times very miscast. The whole adds up to a waste of your time if you take the risk of watching it. You have been warned.

Susan Sarandon goes "slumming" in Australia and comes up with a pretty nifty thriller, IRRESISTIBLE. She plays a mom and wife and professional artist who begins to imagine things. She hears voices after her mother dies. Doors open and close of their own accord. Family photos disappear. An elderly neighbor swears someone dressed like Sarandon has been going in and out of her house! Changing the locks doesn't appear to help, and hubby Sam Neill is less than sympathetic. The solution comes at us unexpectedly, but then the writer or director decides to take it for one more turn -- at which point I was crying, "Enough!" It comes to A LIFETIME-type conclusion. Sarandon makes the film. Without her edgy performance as the aging, distraught mother, IRRESISTIBLE would be absolutely nothing. Neil is just window dressing.

Predictable, moderately solid...

And it could have been much better if only the plot wasn't so drawn out...

There is a lot of idleness, some situations are unnecessarily emphasized, some are insufficiently emphasized, even the acting in some scenes looks dilettante...

Regardless, I don't regret watching this movie because I'm a huge fan of both Susan Sarandon and Emily Blunt... for whom it's not possible to see all the endless finesse of exceptional acting quality in this movie, but not every movie can or should be a masterpiece- work, which does not mean that it is automatically trash.

A movie for a rainy Sunday afternoon, under a blanket with a cup of tea...

IRRESISTIBLE is a little film from Australia with big ideas and a clumsy script. The story itself is good with enough variation from the usual thriller scripts to make it enjoyable, but the writing borders on improvisation and doesn't provide the motivation for the development of the story to flow smoothly enough to maintain the credibility of the characters.

Set in contemporary Melbourne, Australia, the story begins in media res with our heroine Sophie (Susan Sarandon), a successful illustrator, wife of an equally important architect (Sam Neill), and mother to two little girls, hearing noises and finding odd incidents. Recovering from the death of her beloved mother and caring for her grieving father (Charles 'Bud' Tingwell), Sophie's stress factor is further heightened by the fact that she has a block about the illustrations for a book whose deadline is nearing. Her husband is supportive and encourages her to get away from her problems by attending a party given by a new associate of his at the firm - the bright and beautiful Mara (Emily Blunt) - who just happens to be wearing the same new dress Sophie has purchased for the party. The two meet, dance together, drink together, but innuendos have started: party guests offer condolences for her mothers death but also suggest she join AA for her 'drinking problem'.

Sophie's mind continues to fragment as she imagines she is being stalked by Mara because of events that happen in her house, with her wardrobe, and with paranoia that her husband and Mara are having an affair. She decides to observe Mara closely, discovering facts that feed her paranoia, and is caught in Mara's house - and arrested. From there the story disintegrates into revelation of facts that border on melodrama with ill-defined motivations marring every scene. To reveal the ultimate nidus for the story's plot would rob the viewer of what little surprises there are here.

Ann Turner could have used a script doctor before shooting this film, as the story is fine: it is just clumsy and not finessed. But once again Susan Sarandon proves she is such a fine actress that she can pull off even a spotty script and create a credible character. Sam Neill and Emily Blunt likewise do the best with what they are given with lines and direction. This is not a bad movie at all, just one that needed a bit of surgery before placing it on the screen, and the film is well worth watching for Sarandon fans. She still is one of our finest actresses on the screen today. Grady Harp