Doom (film)

Movie
German title	Doom
Original title	Damage
Country of production	France , Great Britain
original language	English
Publishing year	1992
length	107 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Louis Malle
script	David Hare
production	Louis Malle
music	Zbigniew Preisner
camera	Peter Biziou
cut	John Bloom
occupation
	Jeremy Irons : Dr. Stephen Fleming; Juliette Binoche : Anna Barton; Miranda Richardson : Ingrid Fleming; Rupert Graves : Martyn Fleming; Gemma Clarke : Sally Fleming; Leslie Caron : Elizabeth Prideaux; Peter Stormare : Peter Wetzler;

Doom is an award-winning and nominated film drama by the French director Louis Malle from 1992 , which is based on the novel of the same name by the author Josephine Hart .

action

The politician Dr. Stephen Fleming is Secretary of State . He meets Anna Barton, the new friend of his son Martyn, at a reception and is immediately cast under her spell. A day later, Martyn officially introduces his new girlfriend to his family. Anna hardly says a word during the visit, which Stephen's wife Ingrid finds strange.

A short time later Anna calls Stephen and they meet at Anna's apartment. This is the first time they have sex with each other and not a single word is spoken. A few days later, the family and Anna celebrate Martyn's promotion to editor-in-chief. Here Anna tells of her life as a diplomatic child, that she came to England alone, where she met Martyn. Anna Ingrid is always suspect, and to the question of siblings reported Anna from her one year older brother Ashton, who out of love suicide committed when she was fifteen years old. Stephen later explains to Anna how much he desires her. She assures him that she will always be there for him and they are both passionately loving each other again. Anna then tells Stephen about her incestuous relationship with her brother Ashton.

During a conference in Brussels, Stephen takes the train to Paris, where Anna is with Martyn. The two meet and love each other in a gate entrance. Anna asks Stephen not to follow Martyn and her. Stephen watches them from a hotel across the street. Gradually, the relationship becomes more than just an affair for Stephen , he is obsessed with this woman and he wants to leave Ingrid. However, Anna firmly rejects these plans. While visiting Anna, Stephen surprisingly meets Peter Wetzler, a former friend of Anna, who immediately assesses the relationship between Stephen and Anna correctly. Anna later explains to Stephen that on the night of Ashton's death she was out with Peter, Ashton followed them and became jealous of Peter and even all of his sister's future partners. When she returned, he made a scene to her, whereupon Anna fled to her room and locked Ashton out. The next morning, Ashton was found in the bathroom with his wrists cut. Anna fled to Peter's family, and the two became lovers.

Stephen and Anna's affair continues, but on Ingrid's birthday, Martyn, to the surprise of the family, announces his imminent wedding to Anna. Stephen meets Anna in his apartment at night. When Stephen comes out of Anna's room, his daughter Sally is watching him. The situation becomes more complicated when Anna's mother is introduced to the family of her future son-in-law at a meal, and she quickly realizes how things stand between Stephen and Anna. She tries to warn Stephen about Anna with hints. To her daughter's embarrassment, she mentions the striking resemblance between Martyn and Ashton. When Stephen takes Anna's mother to her hotel, she asks him to give up on her daughter, not to stand in her way. Then Stephen ends the affair on the phone. Martyn gives his father, who visits him in the editorial office, a black and white photo of Anna, Stephen and himself, in which the similarity between father and son is striking.

Anna resurrects the affair by giving Stephen a key to an apartment. They meet there, and Stephen in a hurry leaves the key in the outside door. By chance, Martyn learns that Anna has rented an apartment that he doesn't know about and that probably has a problem with craftsmen. He wants to notify Anna there and catches her and Stephen making passionate love games. Martyn staggered out of the apartment in shock and fell backwards over the banister to death.

After this scandal, Stephens' political career, who had recently been offered the office of Minister of Health, came to an end. Ingrid, who tries to cope with the loss of her son through self-mutilation, makes Stephen grave allegations and breaks up with him. Stephen says that he happened to see Anna again at an airport. She was accompanied by Peter and was holding a child by the hand. Stephen spends the rest of his life in a house somewhere in southern Europe. The black and white photo - life size - covers almost an entire wall.

Movie title

In the English original the film is called "Damage", in the French dubbing "Fatale". The German distributor decided based on the French title for "Ver Destiny", as this reflects several fateful events in the plot. The decisive "fate", however, is Martyn's accidental discovery of the affair and his resulting death. The symbol of this “doom” is the key to the apartment that Anna rents. Stephen uses the key to silently send a message to Anna in the midst of the family when he pressed the tag to his lips. When they meet in the apartment, he forgets to take the key out of the lock. When Martyn stands in front of the door a little later, his hand turning the key in the lock is shown in a close-up. Martyn becomes aware of the affair and his retreat ends in a fall into the abyss.

History of origin

The film was based on the novel of the same name by the Irish writer Josephine Hart , which was published in 1991. The book quickly became a bestseller in Europe and the USA and was on the bestseller list of the renowned US magazine Publishers Weekly for 16 weeks . After the great success of the novel, the English screenwriter David Hare was entrusted with the material and adapted it for the cinema.

Filming began on February 22, 1992 and ended just under three months later on May 15. The exterior shots for Doom were filmed on location in London and Paris. The studio work took place at Shepperton Studios in Surrey . Director Louis Malle suffered a heart attack the year it was made , but was able to finish the film.

Reviews

Malles film was received very mixed after its premiere by the critics, but has been widely praised the acting of Juliette Binoche in fatality .

In the New York Times , Janet Maslin criticized the script for the film, which was edited by David Hare. Not even a director with the intelligence, artistic taste and range of Malles could manage to implement the lengthy and artificial model in a coherent manner. Apparently the only appealing part of the film is its undisguised staging of the erotic, without which the film would lose any intensity in its effect.

The renowned American film critic Roger Ebert , on the other hand, praised the excellent screenplay by Hare and saw in Male's work a successful and gripping cinematic representation not only of a fateful passionate affair , but above all of the obsession and erotomania of an older man and the complex and hidden feelings of a young woman which can only be adequately expressed on the screen through the mutual exchange of gaze between the two protagonists.

David Ansen, one of the more important American journalists and reviewers as well as the former artistic director of the Los Angeles Film Festival , viewed Doom in his criticism as an excellent film production, but not as an absolutely great film. Although Josephine Harts was adapted from Hare's flamboyant novel, the film was implemented as well as possible, but the plot is not very believable. In terms of film technology and cinematography , Male's film version is flawless and brilliantly designed, especially with regard to the production design and costume design. The film is so gripping for the viewer, but it shouldn't be taken too seriously.

Johannes Saltzwedel praised in his film review above all the cast of the film by the old master director, Louis Malle, with the beautiful, mysterious, aloof and yet passionate presentation by Juliette Binoche. The Parisian actress appears in Malles' film adaptation as a "catalyst"; the character of the young Anna Barton, whose "quiet determination allows the story to steer the story from unconditional passion to its evil end", is Binoche "written on the body". By staging her gaze and focusing her eyes, "which seem to conceal innocence and knowledge in equal measure", Malle shows through Binoche's brilliant acting performance a "natural mystery, calm and clear and ready for anything, even the worst, disaster" . Only in this way does the development of the simple, fatal London triangle story, which Malle filmed directly and unironically, develop its real intensity and meaning.

In the lexicon of international film , Male's work is highlighted as an “amoral film full of erotic tension” which “coherently describes the stages of a downfall”. Furthermore, it says there, "[h] excellent actors and a dignified equipment", which are in harmony with the plot, would raise the film "above the level of comparable films".