Burlesque (2010) Reviews

• a dark and twisted thriller

  gregking42010-08-27

  Burlesque is the second film from writer/director Dominic Deacon, whose first feature, the dark trashy "nunsploitation" thriller Bad Habits, proved to be a winner at MUFF 2009, picking up awards for Best Screenplay and Best Actress. Deacon's films are influenced by a hybrid art house and grind-house sensibility. His latest feature is Burlesque, a dark and twisted thriller about Frank Bannister (Haydn Evans), a reclusive writer full of self-loathing and on the verge of a breakdown. His stories are dark, violent and sexy tales about revenge and murder, and he now seems to be caught up in living one of his stories. Frank is soon trapped in a nightmare where he seems to be making a movie based on one of his novels. He has a strange encounter with a pair of sexy strippers, who torment him. But Burlesque soon begins to blur the line between fiction and reality, and is an unnerving experience for audiences. Deacon wrote many of the roles in the film for actors with whom he had worked on Bad Habits. Dennis Kreusler (who has had small roles in TV mini-series The Pacific, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, etc) is cast as Richard, Frank's friend who finds himself on the receiving end of Frank's twisted desire for revenge. This low budget film was shot in Melbourne over a hectic nine-day period, and its origins show in the lack of polish and the cheap production values. The performances are unconvincing and some of the characters lack depth.

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