The Key

"The Key" is based on the novel, "Kagi", by the great Japanese author, Jun'ichirō Tanizaki. The greatest difficulty with bringing this story to screen is that it has no actual plot. It is about a long-married couple who seem to have lost the ability to communicate honestly.

The wife (Bai Ling) is a conservative, inhibited lover, while her artist husband (David Arquette) is obsessed with sexuality, jealousy, and control.

As the film begins, the wife finds a diary of his sexual fantasies that her husband had accidentally left available for her to see. Yet she refuses to read it, if for no other reason than spite. For the same reason, she begins to keep a diary herself, hoping he will find and read it.

The script is basically each of them telling to the viewer the contents of their diaries,describing their own points of view.

Tanazaki, the novelist, suggests that we "find beauty not only in the thing itself but in the pattern of the shadows, the light and dark which that thing provides."

Taking his advice to heart, director, Jefery Levy, has created a most unusual, beautiful work of art. This is a timeless, surreal world, where the uniquely unsettling cinematography has an ethereal, dreamlike quality, sometimes hallucinatory, as the couple try to communicate secret passions through the unread diaries, as the husband moves from passion to obsession to insanity.

David Arquette is fierce in his role as the sexually driven, tortured artist, continually seeking that which he can't define, while hoping that his wife will read his diary and understand. She, in turn, wishes the same about her diary.

Bai Ling is in full command of her role, and in many ways this may be one of her very best performances. Beautiful, but repressed, she is manipulated by her husband to achieve his desires, until she begins to rival his gradual loss of sanity. The viewer will wonder if it is perhaps she who has become the manipulator. Bai Ling's depth as an artist is on full display here, and you won't soon forget this performance as she captures both the light and the dark which "The Key" provides.

Greetings again from the darkness. Novelist Jurichiro Tanizaki was nominated for Nobel in Literature, and is one of the more revered modern era writers from Japan. His 1955 novel "Kagi" is the source for this direct-to-video effort from director Jefery Levy, as well as a 1983 film version from Italian director Tinto Brass. Mr. Levy's production is some sort of experimental film approach that employs the LSD effect utilized by so many movies … only this one isn't based in the 1960's and the trippy drug plays absolutely no role here.

Jack (David Arquette) and Ida (Bai Ling) have been married 16 years, and have for the most part, ceased to communicate. This void especially bothers Jack as it pertains to their sex life. He is so focused on this aspect that he commits to writing down all his feelings on this topic in his diary. We learn this because he tells us. Narration is key to the film … well that and the headache-inducing strobe edits and combination lighting-color-texture used to bring the diary entries to life.

One day Jack leaves the key to his desk drawer out so that Ida has full access to his diary, and his deepest thoughts. She refuses to read it, and instead decides to start her own diary. These two are not so creative when it comes to tormenting each other … though they go to great lengths to avoid a conversation.

Somehow, despite the lack of a plot, the obnoxious strobe-lighting, the never-ending nudity, and the droning narration, Bai Ling manages to stand out in her role. For one thing, she is an infinitely better narrator than Mr. Arquette, but more importantly, she seizes the few opportunities to bring some depth and humanity to her character.

It's a story of frustration, obsession, questionable sexual habits, and the price paid for an absence of communication. The dreamlike visuals and the incessant narration never allow us to really connect with either character … even with the Charlie Chaplin bits performed by Ms. Ling. The film might be worth exploring from a technical aspect, but the less-than-graceful translation of the novel makes this a tough one to watch, or even to understand who its audience might be.