Center of the World, The (Rental)
When rich Software geek Richard (Sarsgaard) meets stripper Florence (Parker), he offers her $10,000 to go to Las Vegas with him for a weekend, and be his "date". With contractual obligations of what she will and won't do with him during the weekend, off they go. During the trip they meet Florence's friend Gerri (Gugino), a single mother who supports her son through prostitution. Set almost....
When rich Software geek Richard (Sarsgaard) meets stripper Florence (Parker), he offers her $10,000 to go to Las Vegas with him for a weekend, and be his "date". With contractual obligations of what she will and won't do with him during the weekend, off they go. During the trip they meet Florence's friend Gerri (Gugino), a single mother who supports her son through prostitution. Set almost entirely in the Las Vegas hotel room, we see Richard and Florence trying to come to terms with who they are and who they want to be.
This movie is marketed by the movie company as an erotic thriller. It is neither erotic nor a thriller. What it is, is a reasonably pedestrian observation of two rather two-dimensional characters - the rich software guy who wants to be a ladykiller, and the stripper who is trying to persuade herself that going with this guy isn't prostitution. Filmed with some imagination by writer-director Wayne Wang, it's ironic that a movie about self-realisation doesn't know what it wants to be. It tries to be erotic but doesn't show enough, and yet the conversational pieces are fairly uninteresting. The script is a little odd and uncomfortable, and a couple of fairly unpleasant sections are forgotten the moment that someone speaks, whilst the viewer sits, wondering why they bothered. The best scene comes at the end and to be honest I was pleased to see the end titles.
DD5.1 sound was okay - too much noise during the conversational sections, a bit too raw for my liking, and the picture - shot in digital handycam by the look of it, is grainy but as it was intended. Not a film I recommend you spend your money on.
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