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The setting of this movie, in rich and sunny California, is modern day with the central characters being two odd couple psychopathic killers. The couple is championed by free wheeling Lila, and followed by David who is captivated by her and his own problems with perfectionism. As a caution, while this film wasn’t violent in every spot, the depictions of violence were excessive and over the top and it made for a rough ride. Despite these difficulties, there was a psychology to the characters that was interesting and could serve as metaphor. The way the couple operates is that they go from open house to open house and capture the sellers, take over the house, continue their killing spree and when the cover seems to dissipate they make a run for it to the next set of victims. They compartmentalize there pray away as strictly serving their warped purposes while reserving some checkered affection for each other that can possibly be unglued by there completely different styles even while both are equally on the side of pathological. The motivation supplied seems to be partly hostile and party for entertainment purposes as they film the killings and watch them later in the evenings, although it is mysteriously never wholly explained. The team is headed by Lila but David follows along almost as if he was giving marching orders. One thing you do think with these and real life criminals, is how do they have things like cars, a lot of money, and the general supporting infrastructure in the context of a society as a whole that has disenfranchised talented people that can’t make a buck? In between killing sprees, David works alone all day at his laptop writing books and Lila is like the rich socialite that draws in prey though her charms. The prey includes not only weak willed men that on the surface try to resist but also women who have a heterosexual overlay yet also seem to fall prey to her physical charms and her launches at them. In this particular house take over, David does homeowner Alice’s friend in, but for now is sparing Alice in the basement and seems to compartmentalize to some real affection towards her. Alice figures she can maybe talk him into getting away and reforming while Lila is out for the day. Lila represents the fun freewheeling type while David is mired in a perfectionist approach. It is interesting what this movie says about perfectionism through the actions and character of David. The perfectionist mold he has himself in is the fodder for freewheeling Lila to control him. He is so tuned to be perfect that he is willing to take orders about almost anything to keep the perfection in from of him. While is he had some messy aspects, some faults that he could live with and accept, he wouldn’t be able to be tooled up and controlled by Lila, who interesting doesn’t subject herself to perfect like he does, and is more the free roaming type. The character of Dave is in many ways the archetype of what you see as maybe a result of perfectionism. Workers at companies, who are supposed to do near perfect work, might be subject to the rule and laws of the corporation to the extreme and perfect order needs to be maintained towards that, were if things are in a more creative free wheeling corporate style, maybe subjection to the rule would be lessened. And you can think of maybe countries, that had a perfectionist style, yet let themselves follow a controlling madman, and this maybe wouldn’t have happened if people had loosened the reigns on the ideals of people needing to approach standards of perfection in varied ways. Another aspect of the perfectionist streak is as in the case of David in this movie, it can be at the beginnings of identity transfer, where David in his overwhelming need to be perfect, is transferring some of his identity over to the black widow type Lila, so he has a form of outside control on his need to always depict perfection and again this also goes into identity transfer in the manner of group think. You do see this in situations where people are trying to conform at all costs including to the point of personality transfer and again this can be at the National level in its darkest overtones. In listening to the chatter on the way out of this movie, some people were seeing this movie as partially comedic, especially in the wild character of Lila and her brazenness ness. Again, the violence in certain scenes was quite difficult to watch and you also wonder in movies like this why these secondary actors would even want a part so ghoulish. But the casting was good and the leads fit their roles precisely. If there is an up tick to this movie, it might be good to see just how perfection can backfire to the largest degrees.
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movies, criminals, perfection, perfectionism, identity transfer, Tribeca film festival,
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