ochre

Lensing by Seamus McGarvey on Dublin locations is unsuitably dark and ochry in interior and night scenes, while Michael Nyman's music fails to leaven the proceedings.

Through use of sudden blood-red fades and Elemer Ragalyi's warm lensing of the apartment's ochry, terracotta tones, pic generates an underlying sense of unease, vaguely recalling the early sections of Roman Polanski's "Repulsion." A blood-stained towel that keeps cropping up adds to the low-key menace, which finally escalates following a phone call from Klara.

"Sophiiiie!" is shot on DV--to no noticeable artistic benefit--and the transfer to 35mm is nothing special, with a cold, ochry video look to the Hamburg locations that ill matches the richly drawn characters onscreen.

Overall, both films are about even on the tech side, with an ochry period look and some sequences better-staged in one than the other.