Search - Back Against the Wall on DVD

Dull, plodding, perverse, and poorly made

Scott Andrew Hutchins | Bronx, NY, USA | 01/16/2004

(1 out of 5 stars)

"This black and white film is about on par with _Big Brother_ in its plodding insipidness. The film is hard to follow through the endless still-camera shots of pointless and redundant conversations and the director's obsession with masturbation. The characters aren't just quirky, they're farcical--one even appears to have joke store teeth. Fotopolous casts unengaging actors as characters neither intelligent nor interesting in a story that, really lacking any clarity, appears to be about a woman whose situation forces her into a career as a porn star, which she must to masked after her face is scarred. I think. I'm all for ambiguity as long as your mise-en-scène, camerawork, or editing is interesting, but sitting through this at the Naptown Underground Film Festival, which also had many of Fotopoulos's masturbation-obsessed shorts, was a major chore. If anything, this is more an effort at being offensive than an effort to make art."