Asylum

This film is about the wife of a psychiatrist who falls in love with one of the patients in the psychiatric institution.

At the start, I thought that the scenes seem disjointed. The scenes were so short that it seems truncated and underdeveloped. However, as the film develops, the film no longer feels this way. Instead, this turns into an advantage because the scenes are only as long as they need to be, and hence the film is tight and intense, and things happen all the time. There is hardly room for the viewers to breathe!

This is an intense film with a lot of emotions. We get to see love, hate, jealousy and regret. Both the director and the actors capture the emotions in the most vivid manner that makes me feel for the characters.

The ending is rather unexpected, and the reaction of all the parties concerned in the film are also portrayed.

Very briefly, the story concerns Stella, the wife of a newly arrived deputy superintendent of a prison hospital for the criminally insane and the developing relationship that she forms with one of the trusted inmates. Nothing particularly original about a tale of doomed love - you inevitably suspect that the outcome will be disastrous, but the tale unfolds in a way that is unexpected and gripping. What makes Asylum stand out is the environment in which the tale is set and the quality of the production. I read the book on which the film is based some years ago. I often find that having read a book, a subsequent film can be a disappointment, possibly because the pictures you have formed in your mind vary from those that appear on screen. Asylum differed in this respect and I came away from the viewing haunted by what I had seen and greatly impressed with the absorbing nature of the production. For the benefit of any readers unfamiliar with the work of the author Patrick McGrath, his books often feature characters that are mentally ill. He knows the subject well as he grew up living in the grounds of Broadmoor, the English prison hospital for the criminally insane that features in this story. His father worked on the medical staff there. The film captures the claustrophobic and artificial environment of such a community and I refer to that which is experienced by the staff and their families rather than the patients. The rigid conformity and social constraints to which Stella is subject to are convincingly portrayed. The casting and acting I found pretty much faultless, not only from the big players such as Richardson and McKellen but the lesser known members of the cast excel also. Marton Csokas as Edgar, the subject of Stella's attention is particularly good. I was expecting a worthy but slightly dull 'quality' drama but I found the film unexpectedly absorbing, even though I was familiar with the story. The direction and photography should be praised also – unobtrusive but allowing the story to unfold at a swift pace so as to hold the viewers attention. Highly recommended.

In the 50's, the psychiatrist Max Raphael (Hugh Bonneville) is hired to work as superintendent of an asylum in the outskirts of London, and he moves with his wife Stella Raphael (Natasha Richardson) and their son Charlie (Gus Lewis). Stella has a passionless marriage and is ignored by Max; her boredom changes when her son befriends the handsome inmate Edgar Stark (Marton Csokas), an sculptor that in a crisis of jealousy had killed and disfigured his wife, and that is treated by Dr. Peter Cleave (Ian McKellen), an ambitious psychiatrist that aspired Max's position. During the afternoons, Stella has a hot adulterous affair with Edgar until the day he escapes and their affair is discovered. Stella has to take a decision between her family and her wild passion for Edgar.

"Asylum" is a sort of combination of "Madame Bovary" with "La Ragazza di Trieste", telling the wild and tragic passion of an ignored and bored woman and her descent into a hell life with a madman. The narrative is sexually tense, and the still sexy Natasha Richardson has a fantastic performance in the role of a woman that becomes obsessed by her destructive desire. Her chemistry with Marton Csokas is amazing, combining tension, madness and eroticism in a stylish cinematography. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Paixão Sem Limites" ("Passion Without Limits")

Patrick McGrath's novel has been faithfully translated to the screen by Patrick Marber, and directed with great care by David Mackenzie. The film's basic idea is to what extent a woman can go when falling passionately in love with a mad man. Mr. Mackenzie seems to be in complete control, as he takes us for this somewhat erotic ride to show us what makes Stella lose her mind. If you haven't seen the film, maybe you should stop reading here.

The action takes place in the England of the fifties. The look of the film fits perfectly with the story thanks to that faded photography Jules Nuttgens created for the movie. The Raphael family arrives at an insane asylum where he has been hired for an important position. As such, Max must attend to everything because he looks as though he will inherit the director's job. Stella, his wife, is another story. She is bored with the surroundings and with her marriage. There is nothing between Max and Stella in a way of passion.

When Edgar, one of the inmates that is somewhat freer around the institution, is assigned to help restore the green house that belongs to the house the Raphaels occupy, he immediately develops an attraction toward Stella. This young woman is awakened into a sexual frenzy because the way that Edgar makes her feel, something that appears is lacking in her own marriage.

The problem is compounded when Peter Cleave, the ambitious doctor who appears to have been bypassed in favor of Max, realizes what's going on between the two lovers, but it's too late for Stella to react, or change ways, she has already been smitten by something that is more powerful than her own resolve to stay away from the mad Edgar. In a way, there's a hint of homosexuality, in that Cleave might also have feelings for the insane man, but being in control, he can rein his own impulses.

Mr. Mackenzie gets excellent acting from all the principals in the film, especially Natasha Richarson, who as Stella, is perfect for this role. Ian McEwen, the distinguished English actor, makes a great Petere Cleave. The surprise of "Asylum" proves to be Marton Csokas, who plays Edgar. Hugh Bonneville, as the cuckolded husband Max, is also quite effective. Judy Parfitt, Joss Ackland and Gus Lewis are seen in supporting roles.

Mr. Mackenzie has directed with great style as he seems to understand these characters well.

Anyone calling Natasha Richardson's Stella Rafael a "sexually bored housewife" is Not Paying Attention. What happens to her and to Marton Csokas' Edgar is a thunderbolt--a life changing charge that flashes through them both and changes them forever. They have much more in common with Heathcliff and Cathy (of "Wuthering Heights") than any other lovers I've seen on screen in the 21st century: consumed, obsessed to the point of (and beyond) madness in one another, not out of selfishness but out of a cosmic passion that takes them both utterly by surprise. Certainly, Edgar is a pathologically jealous man: mad, bad and dangerous to know. But madmen can fall in love, too, and he is taken entirely unawares by his passion for the icy, closed-off Stella. What seems on the surface to be a re-enactment of "Lady Chatterly's Lover" turns into the darkest of passion plays. Neither the writer nor the director succumbed to the temptation to make this a sentimental romance or a soap opera; these are dangerous people making dangerous choices, and sometimes dangerous, even tragic mistakes. Like Heathcliff and Cathy, there is no way this story is going to have a happy ending, or these people anything but a tortured denouement. But they are fascinating to watch while they do it.

Marton Csokas absolutely burns through the screen, all fire and smoky, mad eyes to counter Richardson's ice cool yet profoundly moved Stella. Together they heat up to the boiling point and spill over into an explosive combination of lust, love, and tragedy. Ian McKellan's smirking Peter the Freudian is wonderful as the manipulative puppet-master who is not really as clever as he thinks he is. Alas, Hugh Bonneville plays Stella's husband as a one-dimensional cartoon. It's only partly his fault, the character is written that way, but he brings neither subtlety nor nuance to the role. The movie might have been better if McKellan had been cast as the husband, and Bonneville as the shrink. Neither of these characters, however, can hold the screen against the incandescent Edgar and Stella, right up to a surprising and inevitable ending. Even if you condemn them for the disaster they create, you know why they create it. Excellent and disturbing. Highly recommended.