Last reviewed 7.23.01, by Gabriel Ragland, of the Astraea Household

This was a very confusing film.

Antonio Banderas (who we generally like) plays Tony, a smooth talker who is bent on seducing Sarah (played by Rebecca deMornay). Sarah is a criminal psychologist who is supposed to be evaluating a serial killer in jail to see if he is multiple as he claims.  (Way too much like in Silence of the Lambs.) We meet her neighbor (played by Dennis Miller) and her father, who apparently wants to pick up where he left off when she was a kid. (See, Sarah's mother died tragically, and...) We don't meet Sarah's fiance though -- he Disappeared Mysteriously about a year ago. Usually cautious and strong-willed, Sarah has a wild fling with Tony and immediately Strange Things Start To Happen.  She starts getting Phone Calls and Letters and Weird Icky Gifts. Someone is stalking her. Is it Tony? or is it... Problem is, if you pay attention, the whole story is given away in the first twenty minutes.

Spoilers Follow!

Update, January 14, 2004:

All right. As you might have guessed, Tony isn't what he seems. (You're supposed to think he's having an affair with another woman, but this turns out to be only a relative he visits.) He's been observing Sarah closely for a long time, even before falling in love with her, because he's a police officer set to investigate the disappearance of Sarah's fiance. Having set up cameras to gather information about her personal life, he discovers that the one who's been sending her the Weird Icky Gifts is... Surprise! Her other personality! Tony confronts her with this news with her father present, a typical bad-horror-film bonehead move. In a series of flashbacks, we learn that Sarah's father molested her as a child, and tricked her into killing her own mother. This caused her to split off a second self who is afraid of nothing and is contemptuous of men. Devastated by the flood of memories, Sarah pulls out a gun. Tony attempts to take it from her, but he says the words "Trust me," which triggers another set of unpleasant memories and sensations, so she shoots him and her father as well.

As if this wasn't enough Bette Davis scenery chewing melodrama, she looks at the bodies on the floor and realizes that all this stuff about her being multiple was true, and that her other self wants to kill her as well and take over. (Don't they all.) In the same moment, without benefit of agonizing years of therapy, she accepts her other self as being really her all along. That's right, instantaneous integration, right with those dead bodies on the floor and everything. [I'm trying not to think about John 11:39.] Having convinced the police that Tony killed her father, and then came after her so that she shot him for self-defense, she's ready to face into the future with confidence, as a whole person. Happy Ending!

Banderas is a terrific actor and deserves better vehicles than this. I'm looking forward to seeing him as Emilio Sandoz if the film version of Mary Russell's "The Sparrow" ever flies.