TriNetre - Archive for July 16, 2003
(no longer updated)
July 16, 2003
Split Wide Open - a raw film
[Movies]
@ 11:02 AM
Caught "Split Wide Open" shown as the part of Indigo Film Festival. It is an extreme, sex themed look at the city of Bombay. On a whole, the movie looks at a variety of sexual issues that invariably gets wept under the carpet, in every society, Bombay being no exception.
What was disturbing however, is the director Dev Benegal's fixation for incest theme. There is various kind of incest discussed in the movie - between father/daughter, mother-in-law/son-in-law, father-in-law/daughter-in-law mixed with a tinge of gay and threesome. A red flag for all religious and morally sensitive viewers. This is in addition to the typical problems like water shortage etc.
Looking at all these issues in one movie comes with a price, the film looks raw and in the end, half cooked. It leaves the viewer (i.e me) with a jarring sensation of being subjected to someone else's dark fantasies. I have no idea what the motivation for the director was, since I have not done any read-up on the movie, but whatever it is, there should have been an more sensitive way to look at all these issues.
