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Wristcutters: A Love Story
A young slacker sets out to find his girlfriend in a bizarre afterlife that's reserved for people who've committed suicide. Offbeat romantic comedy, blending black humour and weird satire
Films have been speculating about life beyond death for almost as long as they've existed. Delving into the worlds of Heaven and Hell, we've had everything from the monochrome bureaucracy of A Matter Of Life And Death (1946), to the surreal CGI-enhanced wonderlands of What Dreams May Come (1998). There are still plenty of new approaches to be found, though, and Wristcutters: A Love Story gives many of the usual afterlife cliches an unexpected twist, taking them into stranger and kookier territory. It's the story of Zia (Fugit), recently dumped by his beautiful girlfriend Desiree (Bibb), and feeling like life really isn't worth living. So, he slashes his wrists and kills himself - but as it turns out, suicide isn't the ending he expects. Instead he finds himself in a surprisingly mundane form of Purgatory populated by other suicides. It's a world of crumbling, grungy buildings and endless, bleak deserts where everything is "the same... only worse". Nothing works properly, it's impossible to smile, and the only music anyone hears is by other people who've committed suicide. Apart from that, life continues roughly as it did before. For Zia, this involves a menial job at Kamikaze Pizza and befriending an oddball Russian rocker named Eugene, until he hears the shocking news that Desiree has also killed herself. Immediately, he and his new friend set out in a battered car on an eccentric journey to find her, soon gaining an additional passenger in the form of Mikal (Sossoman), a punky hitchhiker convinced she's ended up in this world by mistake. But, as Zia's journey continues, he gradually finds himself and Mikal drifting closer together, and starts wondering whether Desiree really is the right woman for him. Right from the start, Wristcutters takes an unusual, left-field approach to its story, and the film's first half features plenty of memorable sequences and concepts - especially the original way in which we glimpse each character's chosen method of suicide. While writer-director Goran Dukic's script is based on a short story ('Kneller's Happy Campers' by Etgar Keret), he's expanded it widely, and gives the film's 'otherworld' a uniquely Soviet feel, while using a deliberately washed-out visual style. It's a lo-fi tale of the afterlife that's well played by Fugit (Almost Famous) and Sossamon (previously seen in A Knight's Tale and The Rules Of Attraction), with an underlying sense of sweetness that's severely unexpected considering the subject matter. In fact, one of the biggest surprises is that behind the film's dark satire and slacker cool, Wristcutters is a surprisingly conventional love story of the kind that's been turning up onscreen since 1934's classic It Happened One Night. The traditional romantic comedy structure doesn't become obvious for a while, but although it gives the film an effective shape, it's a pity Dukic never quite develops his ideas beyond the first half hour. The episodic plot gradually runs out of things to say, and the somewhat lackadaisical road movie structure gets even looser once the travellers happen across the eccentric Kneller (Waits, on expertly weird form) and his bizarre camp of followers. Matters aren't helped by Dukic's direction being so deliberately non-stylised that it verges on bland, and he doesn't always succeed in hiding the film's low budget, especially when it comes to some decidedly ropey visual effects. As the story heads towards its predictable conclusion, there's no real attempt to address any deeper or more serious themes. Instead, we get a thread of absurdist humour that rapidly becomes rather strained and over-whimsical, while there's also an underdeveloped plotline involving a messiah (a brief cameo from TV comedy 'Arrested Development' co-star Will Arnett) that seems to have wandered in from nowhere. The film's finale manages to be both touching and emotionally satisfying, but Dukic doesn't make the journey there interesting enough, leaving Wristcutters as a genuinely inventive but ultimately rather frustrating misfire. Verdict Veering from witty to occasionally trite, Wristcutters: A Love Story has plenty of originality on its side, but never manages to be more than the sum of its self-consciously quirky parts. |
