Bruges-La-Morte

Who are we? Where are we? And where do we go? Do we stay there? Can we come back? Or is all a dream (nightmare)? When our main character sees a someone he believes/knows is dead ... he of course is intrigued. Having that person (doppelganger) in his house is just the beginning of things ... to come - no pun intended.

A wicked and intriguing oddity from the 70s that has some nice imagery ... well nice may be the wrong way to put it, but you'll know what I mean. The movie really demands your attention though .. and you may not entirely get everything it hints at with your first viewing. It is refreshingly short though - so the "horror" is bearable - pun intended.

It's been years since the untimely death of his wife. The loss has left him empty inside...his days are a stagnant repetition of stuffy formalities, living ghostlike in a meticulously kept home with his elderly charwoman, and a shrine of various trinkets dedicated to the memory of his departed love. Then he sees her...a dancer in a traveling troupe of stage performers. It must be her, the likeness is too great...but she's different now. Coarse, and more assertive. Is it really her? Has his beloved returned to him from the beyond? A ghost...a doppelganger? A hallucination of his agonized mind? She will accompany him through a dark night of the soul...before day breaks, he will face a tragic truth which he has long denied, and both will be set free.

Adapted from a like-titled 19th Century novella which was regarded as a work of some importance in its time, BRUGES LA MORTE is a brooding, surprisingly aesthetic little arthouse endeavor, well dramatized, and endowed by the semi-experimental scoring of WINSTON TONG(formally of TUXEDOMOON). In the true spirit of Victorian melancholia, it's deliberately glacial in pace, but the mood and mystery remain strong enough to buoy intrigue throughout its hour-long duration.

6/10...an interesting, overlooked curio.