Mesmerized - 1986

I guessed later in the 80's....
aka "My Letter to George" and "Shocked"

Again IMDb and Wikipedia argue over the year, 1985 versus 1986, who the fuck cares.  I've heard about this movie for a while, I guess being mildly interested in the career of Jodie Foster and being connected to the vague concept of "things", I have heard of this movie.

John Lithgow and Jodie Foster star in Mesmerized, which is one of three awful titles they auditioned for this movie.  I wonder what the book was called?  I watched this, finally, cause I guess its unpopular enough to be on my motherfuckin' boxset.

What we have is Jodie as a young, naive, unknowing woman who marries John Lithgow in the first few moments of the film.  She doesn't like him from the offset, and I argued with myself about if her actions in this movie are justified.  I think this is an example of a film which could have arguably made the actions more shown versus inferred.

There is in this movie:  Suggested marital rape.  There is also proven voyeurism.  There is implied possible slight physical abuse.  But nothing being shown makes us unfortunately side with Lithgow for quite a while.  Which, if it was planned, turned out perfectly.

This movie is the type of thing which will leave an impact whether you "agree" with it or not.  The acting fucking sells the thing, and you'll like it whether you want to or not.  There is a insane level of performance in here, for a slightly incomplete story.

We never truly know either characters motivation, and nor do we really understand the why or how of it all.  Several key elements are left blank, and we fill in the details as we can, but it is too many blanks that may end up with the wrong leaning Mad Libs.

I feel like this is a great movie with great potential, and the infused meaning will stay with you no matter what you read into it.  It's greatly shot and acted.

I wanted to splice in the IMDb plot outline which says "An orphaned New Zealand girl married to an older, wealthy businessman learns to deal with his strange sexual desires."  This is fantastic cause it's nothing at all about the actual plot of the movie.  He wants to have marital sex with her.  That's literally it.  And it's all about his mostly mental abuse of her and her dealing with that.

I have to say this rivals Lamb in terms of emotionally effecting films on the set.  I liked this, but I still think it gets only about a 4.5