stsinger

"Doll Face" is one of the weirdest movies I've ever seen. Not weird in a "Being John Malkovich" or "Eraserhead" way, weird in a "What the heck am I watching?" sort of way.

"Doll Face" starts with young French woman Marmalade (yes, that's her name) being willed her grandmother's luxury condominium. The condition is that she must take care of all the dolls her grandmother had, and the condo is LOADED with dolls.... they are everywhere. Marmalade seems to have no problems with that, however, and takes well to living with all the dolls. But... strange things seem to start happening. It appears the dolls might be almost alive, and several dolls seem to be trying to get her to hang herself. Is she imagining things? She does seem to be seeing a psychiatrist so she realizes that's a possibility, but the dollmaker that her grandmother insisted she call if anything happens seems to be hinting about some sort of a curse so maybe it's real...

The movie might have been creepy and interesting -- I mean, the whole place is filled with dolls and "creepy dolls" almost always work. But the writer/director used a "probably sounded better when I wrote it" idea, and maybe the most extreme example of "sounded better on paper idea" that I've ever seen. Marmalade is played by the stunningly gorgeous Alix Villaret, and in order to drive home the concept that she is "one" with the dolls, the writer/director decided to make her talk like a doll would. That is, she didn't move her lips and the voice just came out. I'm sure the effect was intended to seem like someone had pulled a string and the voice came out, but it fails hugely. First of all, it's jarring and you NEVER get used to it. Every time it happens, you sort of recoil. Secondly, the effect itself is a disaster -- her voice is clearly dubbed in a separate track and so when she has a conversation with someone, her voice is so obviously on a different vocal track that not only you have to deal with the fact that the person she's talking to seems to have no problem with her talking in sort of a disembodied voice, the voice is in such a different sound level that you want to laugh at the absurdity of the whole thing. And I can't tell you who the writer/director is, because he or she removed themselves from the credits (literally, the credit is "Written and Directed by (just a bunch of smudges)".

I can only assume that once he or she saw the film and how their idea turned out, they just didn't want their name to be involved. Without this crazy "she's just like the dolls" voice thing, it still wouldn't have been a good movie, but would have been more watchable. There would have been creepy dolls, and Alix Villaret works hard and is engaging and, as I said, absolutely beautiful to look at. But even with that, there would be issues. The ending appears to be obvious, but really doesn't meld with most that that had come before, and there's a tacked on coda that appears to be have been added to pad the movie out to 75 minutes.

Can't recommend it, although part of me says you should watch it just to see the whole thing. Hopefully this review has given you a sense about whether it's worth it for you.