Insult and show – Weekend
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On the screens “Stop Word” is the second feature film directed by Zachary Wigon, who until now has been noted only for the extremely boring erotic drama “Heart Machine”, which allegedly studied the phenomenon of uberization of human relationships. “Stop word” seems to be about the same thing, but in fact about nothing at all.
Dark hotel room. Apparently a five star hotel. A man named Hal (Christopher Abbott) languishes impatiently on a king size bed. Apparently, a lot of wealth. And modest moral virtues – as it turns out in just a second, because he is not expecting a vital call and not an exquisite room service, but a dominatrix prostitute (Margaret Qualley), of whom he is a longtime client. She responds to the biblical nickname Rebecca, wears a platinum blond wig and, without delay, gets down to her business – insulting and ordering. In an hour and a half, Rebecca will force Hal to lick a crystal-clear toilet, fill out a questionnaire for a hypothetical employment for the position of general manager of a chain of the same five-star hotels, and just stare at the “victim” with a contemptuous look.
Produced by Ilya Stewart, the psychological erotic thriller Stop Word reminds us of something from the very first frames. It is possible that all bad movies combined. But if you overcome boredom and think about it, it will become obvious: “Stop Word” is almost like a copy of the film “Piercing”, which failed at the box office five years ago. Christopher Abbott also played there – a strange client who called a blonde dominatrix to a hotel room. The only difference between these two films is that Mia Wasikowski, who served Abbott in 2018, did not have a wig on her head, but her own natural hair. “Piercing”, however, was a film adaptation of Ryu Murakami, the author, as befits Asians, famous for his constant desire to turn any plot into a bloodbath with elements of caricature eccentricity. This fact (a stylistic feature) at the very least created suspense: until the moment when the viewer guessed that Abbott and Wasikowski were cutting each other in the frame without a knife, embodying the most banal of the rhymes “love / blood” on the screen, about half an hour passed. In Stop Word, where Abbott and Qualley are trying to kill not each other, but our time, the suspense lasts about five minutes. Silence follows, occasionally interrupted by ridiculous remarks like “you’re a bad boy, so I won’t let you come.” Yes, Lord, let him finish, I want to shout back, for something we paid our 300 rubles? Alas, this parody of action-packed erotica is not an interactive spectacle.
“Stop Word”, by the way, is also a film adaptation – plays by Mickey Bloomberg (not to be confused with the former mayor of New York). Theatricality, however, has not gone away, and Abbott, who was discovered by the general public thanks to the Girls series, plays here with the same signature laziness, as if participating in the first reading – only not on chairs, but on upholstered furniture. Qualley is trying a little more, apparently on courage after a much sexier picture of Claire Denis “Stars at Noon”but even her charisma, flickering through the dramatic falseness, is not able to save the “Stop Word” from the nomination for the title of “cinematic curiosity of the year.”
It is characteristic that the Western press, in their devastating reviews, did not fail to go through the carefully chosen naming (in the original, Vigon’s film sounds like “A Safe Place”). “God save us from this movie,” laments The Washington Post critic. “Watching this movie is not safe,” echo colleagues from the San Francisco Chronicle. Russian distributors, like bazaar barkers, regularly exercise in inventions – however, there are fears that the name in the great mighty Russian language will serve the authors a disservice. Whether or not the “Stop Word” will become a stop signal for cinephiles and fellow citizens simply toiling from inescapable anxiety this summer will show the future, which, obviously, is itself in question. And in this sense, the “Stop Word” could be perceived by the audience as a topical statement. Unfortunately, all the content of the product of Ilya Stuart fit on the poster.
At the box office from June 8
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