Absolutely Fantastic

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

In New Orleans, Zandalee (Erika Anderson) is married to poet-at-heart Thierry Martin (Judge Reinhold). He's struggling to keep afloat his father's business. Their marriage is in trouble. Childhood friend Johnny Collins (Nicolas Cage) comes back into his life after a bachelor party. Zandalee starts an affair with the wild painter Johnny.This is a lifeless movie. The stone-faced Erika Anderson lacks any kind of acting charisma. She was probably much better as a model. Her main contribution to the movie is nudity. Director Sam Pillsbury tries to inject nudity to spice up this tired melodrama. It doesn't work. The dialog is clunky as heck. The pace is as slow as molasses. This is sexploitation B-movie with a lot of great actors and Erika.

If you like nudity, I mean if you really, really, like nudity, this is one of the more frank nudist films I've seen. Some of it's nudity is naughty, for all you bird smugglers out there. Popular to belief, this is a bad film. It isn't. It's one of these arty, more unnoticed films, especially on Cage's resume. I've seen this film a lot. If you look past the nudity and appreciative helpings of sex, there is a story, but it's through this three characters in this love triangle, where for one, jealously goes beyond it's limit, another one, sadly in it's finale is a victim of circumstance I guess, while Cage, the other, in the end, is really the loser. He brings another crazy offbeat character that's mystifying in the form of a sleazy nude artist/university dropout/womanizer/part time magician, Johnny Collins. He's now back in the bayou working for his new boss, old school friend/gifted poet Reinhold, particularly good here, who speaks a southern accent, the way he delivers his poetry, he's just great. And so is his wife, Zandalee (Erika Anderson) not acting wise, just beautiful scenery. She doesn't even try to act, which must of been a worry. Joe Pantoliano, who almost trademarks character acting, is great as a cross dresser who works with Zandalee in her boutique. Soon Cage is getting in Anderson's pants, and it's almost as though Reinhold cracked onto this from the start, but you aren't sure, where he makes soft insinuations here and there, some through poetry. That's what I like about it, an incertitude, a scariness too, as what will Reinhold end up doing. Reinhold's a very tortured man of past, who gave the poetry up, as well as his performance in the bedroom, which is why Zandalee is drifting away from him and satisfying her sexual yearning from Cage in some pretty raunchy scenes. The prolonged last act of the film was interesting as that speedboat ride took a more than dangerous turn, but a real tragic one, evolved in the last breathing moments of the film, that was unforeseen, and truly climactic. For sex lovers, this one's sure not to disappoint, but there is more to this film than that, and that's not just in it's story. This is another of Cage's best performances among many. His name defines acting in it's true purpose, to take that character all the way, not be inhibited, something Nick definitely, isn't, in or off camera.

The movie is not as bad as the overall rating shows. I presume too many people saw it on account of Nicholas Cage and got disappointed. The problem is that the drama does not develop in one direction. It ended as a banal story about adultery culminating in a theatrical suicide and an unconvincing tragedy. Cage (Johnny), the outsider, turned up to be the guiltiest of all. Yet, until the middle the movie had developed around Anderson (Zandalee) and at some point it looked as if the victim of the drama would be exactly Cage who fell desperately in love with beautiful Anderson while she was using him to overcome her frustrations with husband Thierry. That seemed to be the purpose of the two supporting characters: Tatta and the gay shop-attendant who were pushing her into adultery, so as to save her marriage. At some point, either when shooting or when cutting, the concept changed and the triangle lost everything even remotely intriguing.

Zandalee is the kind of movie that a teenage boy would watch late at night on HBO...only after locking his bedroom door. New Orleans is very pretty, and there's some decent sex scenes, but other than that there's nothing more here that hasn't been done better somewhere else. It is what it is.