REVIEWED: ASYLUM THERE have been a few films named Asylum, but, to this point, the best known was a delightful British portmanteau horror released by Amicus Pictures in 1972, writes Donald Clarke
One senses that the distinguished personnel behind this panting adaptation of Patrick McGrath's gothic novel were aiming for something a little more high of brow, but, featuring a weird, desiccated scientist, a swarthy, murderous brute and a great deal of gloomy architecture, the film might, after a little editing, have worked well as an episode in the Amicus flick.
Anna Karenina by way of Lady Chatterley's Lover, this Asylum follows the decline from finger-tapping boredom into penny-dreadful tragedy of Stella Raphael, the wife of a newly employed psychiatrist at a remote mental hospital.
It is the late 1950s and Stella, played effectively enough by the glacial Natasha Richardson, has subconsciously anticipated the arrival of the swinging decade to come by becoming irritated at the floral print dresses worn by other psychiatrists' wives. Then she spies Edgar (Marton Czokas), a spouse-murdering inmate who has been allowed to help repair the Raphaels' greenhouse. Before long they are rolling lubriciously amid the compost and begonias.
Why doesn't Asylum work in the way the film-makers intend? David Mackenzie, director of the fine Young Adam, brings an effective watery gloom to the visuals, and screenwriter Patrick Marber, author of Closer, finds dry humour in the clipped dialogue. But, rather than inspiring musings on the sexual hooligan that lurks within even the calmest breast, Czokas's knuckle-dragging Edgar prompts recollections of Boris Karloff's Frankenstein Monster.
Like magic realism, gothic drama - even McGrath's grey-tea version - can look desperately overheated when translated from the page to the screen. Still, featuring a satisfactorily arachnid performance by Ian McKellen in the Peter Cushing role, the picture should satisfy those in search of broad, foggy melodrama. Just don't expect to believe a word of it.
