DVD
The comfort of strangers
Call Number
- DVD DRAMA (CEN)
Edition
Director-approved DVD special edition.
Languages
English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Performers
Christopher Walken, Natasha Richardson, Rupert Everett, Helen Mirren.
Publication Information
[Irvington, NY] : Criterion Collection, [2020]
Physical Description
1 videodisc (104 minutes) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in. + 1 folded sheet (color illustrations ; 19 cm.)
Audience
MPAA rating: R; for obsessive and perverse sexuality.
Summary
Adapting the acclaimed novel by Ian McEwan, playwright and screenwriter Harold Pinter lends his signature unnerving dialogue and air of creeping menace to this spellbinding study of power, control, and the frighteningly thin line between pleasure and pain. Rupert Everett and Natasha Richardson are the prey, a beautiful British couple working on their relationship while on holiday in Venice; Christopher Walken and Helen Mirren are the hunters who draw them into the sinister web of their opulent, old-world palazzo. What plays out is an unsettling, sadomasochistic seduction imbued with an atmosphere of sumptuous dread by the elegantly gliding tracking shots of cinematographer Dante Spinotti, lush score by Angelo Badalamenti, and carefully controlled direction of Paul Schrader, who choreographs a mesmerizing pas de quatre of sustained erotic and emotional tension.
Notes
Title from container.
Based on the novel by Ian McEwan.
Originally released as a motion picture in 1990.
Special features: New, restored 4K digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Dante Spinotti and approved by director Paul Schrader ; new interviews with Spinotti, Schrader, actor Christopher Walken, and editor Bill Pankow ; interviews from 1981 and 2001 with novelist Ian McEwan and actor Natasha Richardson ; trailers.