Sue I wasn't sure what to expect of this film but thought the cast list made it worth a look. Having just finished watching it, I'm still not entirely sure whether or not I enjoyed it but it was certainly interesting and somewhat compelling.It is a thriller and there are several moments of suspense and moments where I found myself taking a sharp intake of breath, but it is certainly not particularly scary or shocking. The best moment, for me, was the ending which, even though I realised what was going to happen, was well-executed and did make me jump.Elaine Paige is a very strange choice for one of the cameo roles and I'm not sure what prompted her casting, and (sorry if it sounds trivial) I found Daryl Hannah's "new" facial appearance rather distracting. Tom Conti's character is rather wooden at times and, at other times, is rather moving and interesting. Miriam Margolyes is one of my favourite actors but is given no opportunity at all to shine.All in all? As I said in my title, strange but rather compelling. Definitely worth watching but just don't set your expectations too high.

gridoon2018 "A Closed Book" is a rare English-language project from the extremely prolific Chilean director Raul Ruiz, and it's also one of the last films he completed before his death. "Poirot" and "Marple" (see also "4:50 From Paddington" and "The Secret Of Chimneys") fans will feel right at home in the magnificent Knebworth House where most of this is filmed and set, and "Sleuth" or "Deathtrap" fans will appreciate the two-character format (90% of the movie is between Tom Conti and Daryl Hannah; there are only three supporting characters, two of whom have one short scene each). This is almost a terrific film: Ruiz's use of the camera is masterful (you must be careful to notice some telling details in the background - a mirror removed, for example), the dialogue (very important in a film like this) is well-written, and the story keeps you wondering. The main problem is that there aren't enough clues for the viewer to figure out the motivations of the characters for him/herself before they are revealed, so these revelations seem to come out of nowhere. An intriguing film, but not for all tastes. **1/2 out of 4.

timmy_501 As A Closed Book begins, distinguished author Sir Paul is planning on writing his first book since a head injury that made him completely blind four years previously. In order to do this he needs a helper so he hires Jane Ryder, an intelligent but mysterious woman who agrees to live with him in his baroque mansion five days a week. Sir Paul is unsurprisingly a fussy, arrogant man who would likely be hard for anyone to deal with. Still, it's hard not to feel sympathy for him as it quickly becomes clear that Jane takes sadistic pleasure in deceiving him. This starts out harmlessly enough with lies about a jigsaw puzzle and made up news stories about the murder of Madonna and the suicide of O.J. Simpson but progresses into harmful territory as she begins to rearrange the furniture and leave books on the stairs. The last few minutes of the film involve some hastily applied twists that don't really give the viewer much of a chance to comprehend the way the situation has changed before the next one appears. As suspense thrillers go, this is pretty standard fare in the plot department.Since this is a film by maverick auteur Raoul Ruiz the writing is naturally the least important part of the film; as usual his films rely on his unique sensibilities to succeed. For a Ruiz film A Closed Book is fairly low key: there are plenty of unusual angles and the frame tends to be filled with sumptuous details but the camera movements are standard save for the scene in which Jane brazenly tells Sir Paul nonsensical lies as the camera spins wildly directly overhead. There is also an emphasis on the house's architecture, particularly the baroque exterior with its spirals and turrets. A Closed Book is not a film that breaks new ground for Ruiz, in fact the style calls to mind all of the Ruiz films I've seen from the past decade or so including Time Regained, Comedy of Innocence, and That Day but his style is so rich that he could easily spend another twenty years working within it and not exhaust its possibilities.Somewhat perversely for a film released this year, A Closed Book has already been released on R2 DVD. It's also worth noting that the film seems to have been universally judged by the least important aspect of this particular work: the script. This surely accounts for its absurdly low IMDb score (4.7 as of this writing) and the score of negative reviews it has received from critics who view it as a genre film.

chicagopoetry In the vein of What Ever Happened To Baby Jane or Misery, the movie A Closed Book deals with a woman who is mentally torturing a blind man. Daryl Hannah is virtually unrecognizable as the (for whatever reason) unemotional person who has ulterior motives who is hired by a blind author to help him write his autobiography. Hannah looks like a cross between Catherine O'Hare and Loretta Swit, if they were both on Lexapro on bad hair days. Too bad she didn't revamp her role in Kill Bill: that would have been scary. Tom Conti has a few good moments as the blind author, but his character is ultimately a confused mess, at one point highly acute to sounds and smells (even though he's only been blind for a few years), and at the next point completely helpless and stumbling over his own feet. But the most distracting flaw in Conti's character is that he has eyes that don't even exist, with skin that has grown over the sockets like something out of a Twilight Zone episode. Now how can we believe that? Why not just give him empty holes or ghost white eyeballs or something else that is believable? I was looking forward to seeing what Ellen Page had to offer to this film but to my disappointment the actress turned out to be someone named Elaine Paige. Guess I should read the credits more closely. We never find out what happened to the housekeeper and the ending comes out of left field as intensely as a wiffle-ball. There was some real potential here to do some really creepy things and if they had played upon the theme of claustrophobia and the fear of the dark, they might have delivered some tense moments, but unfortunately it turned out to be an average night of off-Broadway theatre.