Asylum (2005) from Johnny Web

Scoop's notes in white

Asylum starts out as kind of a 1950s version of Lady Chatterley's Lover. A new administrator moves into a mental health care facility in the English countryside. His marriage seems loveless and virtually passionless, and his wife is obviously frustrated and bored by her life on the campus. She ends up starting a passionate affair with the gardener, who is a young, lusty and Russell Crowe-lookin' mofo. Of course, in this situation she's taking a bigger risk than Lady Chatterley, because her gardener is also a patient in the asylum, and a rather dangerous one at that, one who killed his wife in a particularly gruesome fashion. The affair leads to some unfortunate consequences, a simple summary of which would read "tragedy ensues."

Some have described Asylum as a psychological thriller, perhaps because it features several psychologists as characters, although nothing seems to explain the "thriller" portion of the equation. I believe the film would best be described as a particularly over-the-top gothic romance, even though that may not be a fair description of the source novel, which seems to be respected as an analysis of female subservience in the repressed culture of Britain in the 50s.

Critical reaction was divided:

  • The best reviews offered comments like this one from Amazon.com: "There are times when one might be tempted to dismiss Asylum as too opaque in its explanation for why Stella does the often wretched things she does. But patience is well rewarded: It takes full running time of the movie for the story's complete design to become clear."
  • The worst reviews were pretty bad indeed. The Washington Post called it "unfortunate, tragic and appallingly, infuriatingly, time-wastingly stupid."

I wouldn't go as far as the Post, but I found the melodramatic plot twists to be bordering on the absurd and capable of testing the patience of even the most tolerant viewer, which I am certainly not.
 

DVD INFO

  • No features except the original trailer
  • the transfer is anamorphically enhanced, and is not especially vivid

 

NUDITY REPORT

Natasha Richardson (breast, bum, and procto-cam) (1, 2, 3)

Tuna's notes in yellow

Asylum (2005) is an English indie about the wife (Natasha Richardson) of a rising public health psychiatrist, and her Lady Chatterley-like affair with one of the patients. There are no likeable people in this film, with the possible exception of the retiring director of the asylum. It is peopled by Stepford Wives of stuffy shrinks with private agendas, a snotty husband more concerned with work than family, a brat of a young son, the mother-in-law from hell and Richardson's character, who was entirely too self-centered to be sympathetic.

I generally do not like films full of people I would not voluntarily spend time with in real life, but this was a noticeable exception. I have no idea if this was a love story, a psychological thriller, or an indictment of the mental health system of the 50s, but, whatever it was, it held my interest. The demographics at IMDb predicted that this film would appeal to young women and older men, but I am at a loss to explain why, or why I enjoyed this - perhaps because the sex scenes had a great deal of raw passion and perhaps because the story was not entirely predictable.