Tagines: “Between Love and Madness… Between Desire and Obsession… Between a Man and a Woman…”
Denial is a deeply affecting psychological study of Sarah (Robin Wright), affectionately called Loon by her friends and imprisoned in a wounded memory. For Loon escape provides no liberation. Having left her home and a tumultuous relationship with Michael (Jason Patric), she finds a haven in the borne of Jay (Barry Primus) and his daughter Sid (Christine Harnos).
However, the memories of her college years with Michael cling to her, reminding her that the woman she is, and the woman she thought she wanted to be, have both been shaped by him. When a former classmate, Julie (Rae Dawn Chong), reenters her life, she more than ever feels the anguish of memory. However, through Julie’s films of their college days, Loon begins to learn that the past need not hold her.
Director Erin Dignam weaves a graceful drama which has presence. Brooding, delicate and fifed with uncertainty, this is a difficult work that demands our concentration. Loon delineates an internal drama rarely attempted and even less often successfully achieved. Robin Wright contributes a remarkable, penetrating performance that epitomizes the director’s concerns, capturing Loon at two completely different periods of her life with astounding depth and complexity. So remarkable is the difference between the younger and the older Loon, physically as well as psychologically, it is as if a sister had been called in to play the younger part.
Reynaldo Villalobos’s cinematography is careful, with an effective use of natural and white light. Working in harmony with the picture is the minimal score by Harold Budd. Probing distantly, this music is unsettling and unresolved. Ms. Dignam integrates the cinematic elements to move the film from cool detachment to empathy. Loon is a work that will linger in one’s memory due to its integrity, intelligence and courage.
Denial is a 1990 American drama film, written and directed by Erin Dignam. The film features Robin Wright as “Sarah,” a sometime actress and tall, dark, handsome loner, “Michael” (Jason Patric), as lovers, as they were in real life, (before she was with Sean Penn). “Michael” inhabits the realm of obsessional love with “Sarah” becoming his sickness, as he calls it—or her.
Denial (1990)
Directed by: Erin Dignam
Starring: Robin Wright, Jason Patric, Barry Primus, Christine Harnos, Rae Dawn Chong, Elizabeth Bracco, Rosalind Chao, Maureen Grady, Ronnie Tanksley
Screenplay by: Erin Dignam
Production Design by: William Hultstrom
Cinematography by: Reynaldo Villalobos
Film Editing by: Timothy Mozer, Tatiana S. Riegel
Set Decoration by: Stephanie Carroll
Art Department: Suzi Margolin, Brian Wort
Music by: Harold Budd
Distributed by: Republic Pictures
Release Date: Junuary 22, 1990
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