Cristi_Ciopron
Why are the comments about "Before ..." so negative?I grant the script is rubbish,and the dialogs are crap,each ingredient is banal,the story is the standard slap-dash,but the movie is interesting.In a word,it is a movie badly written,but enjoyable done.First of all,it's good Mrs. Young got a leading role,albeit that only in a decent B thriller;she remains an interesting and ... actress.She makes an aloof and alluring character as "Nell",a strong woman that decides to enter the electoral campaign and to run for her grandfather's chair in the Congress.Nell had a quite rough life and is sometimes pained by panic attacks;she sees a therapist.She feels an intense need to love,and "loves the idea of loving".Nell's grandfather,Mac,the congressman, encourages her to run for the Congress chair.Her husband,"Adam", is an incompetent architect and a quite envenomed man,a boor;he opposes Nell's hopes for a political career.The two have a fight just before "Adam" dies on board his boat,together with some business partners;the boat exploded.(On board was also Winifred,Adam's assistant,and Ryan,his employee that he used for some dirty deeds,such as torching an old mansion).Was the boat's blow-out an accident?A detective does not think so.Adam's widow is soon contacted by Ryan's widow,that found a large sum of money in her husband's things,and by a the detective;she tracks Winifred's mother.A purse with a key is found at shore,and the purse is not so damaged,this suggests someone escaped from the blow-out.Nell goes to a psychic,"Bonnie" (Claudette Mink,a sexy girl),to contact "Adam" through a séance.The movie is about Nell meeting her grandfather,or a policeman,or Bonnie,or Winifred's mother,or Ryan's widow,or Lang,or being threatened by Kaplan.There is a story of pay-offs, a realty,etc..The first 3/4 of "Before ..." have indeed a certain Hitchcockian touch,in a low-brow way,and all proportions kept.The denouement is worse than the rest of the movie (beginning with Nell's second séance at Bonnie's,when the widow takes the key with her,hoping to obtain a confession from Bonnie).The moment Nell enters Bonnie's house to get a second séance and to unmask her,the movie becomes really crap and ridiculous;but not until then.An interesting movie with a spoiled climax.Mrs. Young looks graceful as a distinguished and good-hearted woman;she has many of the requisite endowments (physical as well as interpretative) for making suspenseful Hitchcockian flicks.She has her distinctive character,that of a distant,rather instinctual and tough woman,very lucid and quite sexual;so,Mrs. Young doesn't care much about the script or the written character she gets;in "Before ...",she's not so busy on looking vulnerable,etc..(Must I add that even here she looks far more roguish,glacial,strange than the poor dopey sottish romps and hicks they casted as "villains"?Like another underused actor,Dourif,Mrs. Young is often in the situation to be the only actor in a movie able to provide some thrills,she has to do it all by herself;in "Before I Say ..." she is not just the only star that could be afforded,but also the only experienced thrillers actor.)At least,Mrs. Young is making a picturesque career,with such cheap,B-thrillers,where everyone seems at ease and a certain sense of fun does not miss.Such movies are so obviously destined to anonymity that the intelligent persons don't even try pretending they are in a top movie,but allow themselves a certain pleasing easiness that is absent from the pretentious crap.No sex scenes,not even a kiss,and no shower scene,not even one sensual frame.I've seen far worse and stupid movies (Final Analysis (1992),Sliver (1993)...) being a lot more successful.This film or another,it's good that Mrs. Young works and gets leading roles.Like the major dames of the great thrillers (e.g.,Gloria Grahame),she knows the job is not so much about acting,as it is about looking.This able woman,with her type of beauty, came some 50 years too late for the movies that would have needed her.
