Erosion

If you don't like to be spoon fed a story and instead, enjoy piecing the story together yourself, you will take great pleasure in a film like EROSION.

I saw the film at the Brooklyn International Film Festival. It opens in the middle of the story without the traditional set up. It threw me off a little at first because I didn't know anything about the characters or their conflicts or relationships. Nevertheless, after about 10 minutes, I realized why the story was told this way. Without an upfront setup, I as an audience really got to use my instinct to follow the characters, to feel their pleasure and pain, and to experience what they're going through, without passing on judgments, making assumptions, or knowing where I'm going as a participant. My favorite scene is the costume shop scene where Gabe, the lead character, delivers his monologue on his philosophy of life and the rules of Erosion. That's when I really felt the emotional connection with the character and started to really appreciate the director's choice of storytelling.

This film demands the audience's full attention, as well as participation. If you invest enough of your time and attention following the story, the reward is definitely memorable.

I recently rented Erosion from my neighborhood Hollywood Video and watched it over the weekend. It's an interesting independent film...very anti-Hollywood in terms of its storytelling style. I was originally attracted to the film by its suggestion of eroticism, but it's not until I watch the film when I realized the sexual encounters are not supposed to be for pleasure but more for pain. They are more about the psychological thrill of the moment, the fear to be caught, the voyeur that may be watching. There are not tits and ass in the film, yet it's the audience's own imagination that makes the film so provocative. We are, in a way, their partners in crime. I really enjoyed Erosion and recommend it to anyone whose imagination is not limited by the images they see and the sound they hear...

This is one of the best indie movies that I have seen. I saw it at the Brooklyn Film Festival. The beginning of the movie was a bit slow but a patient audience got rewarded at the end. The storyline is novel and smart. The theme touches the deepest desire of everyone's mind- not satisfy with one's life and want to live another person's life. The acting are both good and so so. The leading actor, Xuereb (???, a difficult name to remember) was brilliant but the leading actress Michelsen was just OK (maybe Xuereb was just too good for her to compare with). This is not a movie for the fast action Hollywood movie seekers but for those indie lovers who have patience and intelligence. It took me some time to fully digest all messages in the movie. I spent $10 for the movie and it definitely worths the money. There is one more thing that I like about the movie. Although it has a very erotic storyline, the director did not put up any unnecessary explicit sex scenes. Well done!!!

In Los Angeles, Irene (Charis Michelsen) works at an advertising agency and lives a boring, loveless and sexually unsatisfying marriage with her husband Carl (Lee Holmes). When she meets the mysterious stranger Gabe (Emmanuel Xuereb), they have an erotic love affair breaking into houses of strangers and stealing their lives for a moment. Both are trying to escape from their pasts with a game that pushes them to the limit of their relationship. But reality is there and can not be forgotten.

"Erosion" is a dramatic "unerotic"-thriller about infidelity of a sexually unsatisfied woman with a promising beginning but a boring development and conclusion. One meaning of erosion is "a gradual decline of something"; in this case, of the morality of the lead character Irene. The plot keeps sexual tension but goes nowhere with the non- explicit game of the lovers. The director Ann Lu is not bold enough and in the end, "Erosion" is neither a drama or romance nor an erotic thriller. My vote is five.

Title (Brazil): "Desejo Selvagem" ("Wild Desire")

Once upon a time a film would tell you a story. If something in the story was extremely sordid, bloody or harrowing the director would miss this part out whilst at the same time allowing you to work out what was happening or had happened through sound or consequence or symbolism. This allowed a far wider audience to see films with really quite important messages.

Here we have the opposite method. Put together the saddest, most painful or just dull aspects of a film that would once have been tastefully left out, and challenge the audience to start trying to imagine the story. We find we can do it that way, being the imaginative creatures we are and having done the work we're pretty much told anyway gradually, but I for one found I didn't really want to. This film made me think... It made me think I'd rather be sat in front of Lethal Weapon. Now that is not good.