This latest from the writer/director of The Doom Generation, Mysterious Skin and most recently the explosive Kaboom finds Gregg Araki channelling his inner Todd Haynes in enticingly evocative fashion. Adapted from Laura Kasischke’s novel, and dripping with the 80s sounds of New Order, Tears for Fears, and Cocteau Twins (Robin Guthrie and Harold Budd share a music credit), the archly melodramatic narrative flip-flops around the disappearance of embittered housewife Eve Connors, played with luridly vampy relish by Eva Green. As Eve’s daughter Kat (Shailene Woodley, continuing to impress) experiments with her Gen-X sexuality, her doormat dad (Christopher Meloni) seems to disappear into the 50s-tinged decor of his suburban dream-home, leaving noirish secrets lurking in the basement. Designed to within an inch of its life, and possessed of an almost Lynchian visual sensibility, this dreamy/nightmarish weirdie finds Araki reining in his anarchic excesses with rewarding results, as his satirical sensuality reaps the benefits of a heavily orchestrated deadpan formality.
