Puffball (2007)

Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

"Puffball" offers many shocking moments, such as the realization that Rita Tushingham hadn't changed at all in over 40 years. (A real witch, perhaps?) She was hideous then, and she's hideous now. What remarkable physical consistency. When you have nothing to lose, you age so much better - or not at all.I thought this kind of voodoo nonsense had been dumped into the movie bin by filmmakers in the 60s. Well, not quite. Certain Roegs and Faye Weldons consider that kind of crap to make for potent fantasy dramas about Irish people shagging each other in the bleak Northern countryside.Half-way through this tiresome drivel, Donald Sutherland shows up, grinning like an ape. Speaking of semen and sperm-donors, why was he ever even allowed to make Kiefer? Sutherland appears as a "wise old man" (dressed as a yuppie: go figure) but he comes off as a confused Methuselah, saying at one point this movie's puffyballian immortal words: "The hardest thing to keep separate is what we do and what we want to be." Now, while this kind of cheap deepakchoprian fortune-cookie utterance may sound true at first glance, think again... Isn't the opposite the case? Isn't it hard to unite what we do and what we want to be? I guess you need to be Roegian to appreciate the "intellectual qualities" of such a movie.But Sutherland doesn't stop there. True to the moronic New Age we live in, Sutherland utters the perennial esoteric favourite of every recent "spiritual" movie: "We know nothing." That's right, Donald, scientists have been wasting millions of their hours, spent futile centuries of hard work sweating over formulas, experiments and theories, and reaching conclusions that mean nothing, spreading lies and falsehoods. To get to the REAL crux of the Secrets of the Universe, it's best to talk to various Roegs and Feldons about it. Shagging in the Irish countryside holds more wisdom than 3000 Newtons and Einsteins combined.The sex is practiced on magical stones, in pig-sties, in bedrooms even (gasp!), just about any time and any place. Just to make sure that we know that it's the sperm that is the star of the show, Roeg shows us some dubious interior shots of Irish intercourse, footage as if kidnapped straight from the National Geographic Channel. What the hell, I thought, they might as well all get pregnant - as long as it isn't Donald Sutherland's seed they're carrying. One Kiefer is quite enough, thank you...Some people wrote about how intelligent and complex Feldon presents women. This couldn't be further from the truth: the women in this movie are portrayed as superstitious, hysterical, unbalanced halfwits who spend their entire lives poking their noses into their neighbours' affairs. If mental imbalance constitutes complexity then I stand corrected.Miranda Richardson has never looked bigger. Whatever happened to her small complexion? She looks like a Desert Storm tank. Whatever happened to her role-picking? She's made some turkeys before, but what kind of lies and exaggerations and charlatanic baloney did Roeg whisper into her gullible, impressionable thespian ears for her to agree to appear in this overlong, silly drama? Reilly, the central character, is totally uninteresting.

I watched this last night with my wife, and within about 45 minutes it turned into an episode of MST3K. The film was jagged, poorly edited, and had terrible camera work. There are several little minor clip scenes inserted into the film that never get explained, for example. The Lars character comes into the movie with NO explanation, you never even know who he is until 5 minutes after he's in scene. The dialogue is terrible. The conversations are unbelievable, not for their audacity but for the fact that they make no sense! Most of the acting here is terrible. The overall writing is horrid. The Puffball itself never gets tied into the movie - this film seems to assume you've read the book or have a clue what's going on, because it doesn't explain almost any of it.

I watched Puffball last night, as a huge Fay Weldon fan who read the book quite a few years ago. I was surprised to discover it was a 2007 film, as the subject matter, and the atmosphere of the pic, would have suggested something many years older.Still, I thought it was quite faithful to the intent of the book, and is, despite some comments, very much a women's film. It deals with elemental forces, and the complexity of women's nature and women's power. The men are little more than sperm donors, penile life support systems to be acted on by women's emotions and a separate women's nature, almost echoing, (or prefiguring, more likely) some of Jane Campion's observations in The Piano, among others.This has always been the heart of Fay Weldon's work, a poke in the eye of naivité, of the "Eyes Wide Shut" variety, about the nature of women. The film doesn't really add to this narrative, but it doesn't diminish it either, which is saying something for a film adaptation of a novel, made by an auteur to boot.

I was recently honoured to attend a screening of Nicolas Roeg's new film 'Puffball', at the Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley. 'Puffball' is Roeg's first major film in some years. Many of you will know his name and work via such classics as 'Don't Look Now', 'Performance', 'Walkabout' and 'The Man Who Fell to Earth'. Nic Roeg 'enjoys' quite a reputation. In simplistic terms, he's considered something of a maverick; an occasionally wayward genius, a visionary director and a legendary cinematographer, he's responsible for some of the most striking, poetic and downright beautiful imagery committed to celluloid. I'm sure he'd wince at the term 'style' when applied to his work but Roeg's films tend to be characterised by, among other things, a fluid, fractured, elastic, playful manipulation of time and space (largely achieved through some utterly idiosyncratic and unpredictable editing) and an uncommon, uncanny knack for revealing and dissecting hitherto 'hidden' connections and correspondences. They're often liberally peppered with literary and artistic allusion too...none more so than 'The Man Who Fell To Earth'. Roeg's 'Puffball' is (reassuringly) utterly unsettling. To me, it seemed like a meditation upon thwarted desires...lust and betrayal, 'homicidal' jealousy, "green-eyed" rage and grief. Kelly Reily plays a young architect who arrives in a beautiful but remote backwater of Ireland with a dream - to build a spectacular home upon the deserted ruins of a burnt-out cottage. But that cottage carries its own dark, secret history, and when Reilly falls pregnant, the envy of the superstitious, witchcraft-practising locals is aroused and old enmities are stirred. A confrontation, if not a conflagration, is in the offing... The film re-unites Roeg with Donald Sutherland although his role is relatively minor, and the wonderful Miranda Richardson surpasses herself as an unhinged, tormented soul who craves a fourth child. Despite some dark themes and darker deeds, humour abounds and Roeg watchers will spot numerous in-jokes and allusions to other works. That said, there are some uncomfortably tense and gruesome scenes including one nightmarish flight of fancy which almost rivals the climax of 'Don't Look Now' for nerve-shredding tension. As always with Roeg, there are some startling and provocative visual surprises. OK, maybe I "haven't lived" but I've never witnessed an ejaculation from the "point of view" of a woman's cervix before! The term "return to form" always strikes me as particularly cheap and meaningless. However, for my money, 'Puffball' is more engrossing and enthralling than any of Mr Roeg's works during the Eighties or Nineties. Highly recommended. I'm afraid I cannot tell you when the film goes on general release in this country but I would urge you to make a "mental note" to see it when the time comes. Andy p.s chastising people for minor spelling errors as this site does can only put us off posting. I actually find it annoying in the extreme. Site admin - you really should turn this irritating and patronising function off.