Dark, dirty 'n deep: David Lowery's ten- fest darling AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS

Just why do Ruth and Bob, the two lovers at the heart of AIN'T THEM BODIES SAINTS, break the law? And what exactly have they done that broke it? "We're just doin' what you taught us," Ruth (Rooney Mara) says to a fellow named Skerritt (Keith Caradine), who may be her father, stepfather, friend or mentor. We don't know much about this, either. In fact, we don't know or even learn much about anything that's going on in this very odd but increasingly hypnotic and enticing movie. Except that Bob (Casey Affleck) is taken off to prison, while Ruth, pregnant, remains behind.

In this, the third full-length film from a writer/
director (and sometimes, though not here, editor and cinematograp-her) David Lowery (shown at left), who has made a passel of shorts, the filmmaker seems bent on exploring and finding a truly different way to tell a story. His movie is tough-going and asks a lot of the audience because it gives us so little of the kind of exposition and explanation we're used to. Yet if you stick with it, the film grows in power. And, yes, there is indeed quite a payoff.

We're back in Texas again, but not the generally benign place we saw in Bernie or Tales from Dell City). No -- this is the land of louts and the like, where the social contract can most often and quickly be found at the end of a gun. Bodies/Saints is also, and most peculiarly, a love story. It begins with a declaration of love, above (which must then be proven throughout the remainder of the film) and a simultaneous arrest.

This it is is one of the reasons Mr. Lowery's film is so powerful. The style is dark -- sometimes even dank -- impressionistic and frac-tured. At times you'll wonder if this is really a tale of love, or instead obsession, maybe insanity. Perhaps all of the above, as some kinds of love embrace a world beyond mere hugs and kisses.

Lowery has cast his three leads very well. Mr Affleck (two photos above) uses his pretty, boyish face as well as he did in both The Assassination of Jesse James... and The Killer Inside Me, but to a very different purpose, while Ms Mara (above and below) uses her ability to make "quiet" seem remarkably rich and foreboding to create a character whom is actually quite simple. We keep trying to give her more reasons and/or abilities, but no -- her Ruth is as single-minded and obsessive as is her man. These characters don't seem to be particularly bright, but they sure are focused.

The third wheel is the police officer (Ben Foster, below) who has been there all the while, since that initial arrest, biding his time, pining unrequitedly for Ruth and finally, providing everything a man can -- except the sex -- to no avail. Mr. Foster, in an unusually passive role, is fine but doesn't register as strongly as he often does. No one can complete nor outdo these two lovers in the movie's imagination.

The film is often shot so darkly that many of the subsidiary characters -- the gunmen who come after Bob, for instance -- don't register as more than villainous blips on the radar. If Bob's friend Sweetie (Nate Parker) shines brighter than the rest, that may be because he has a little light shed on him now and then.

The film is heavy going for awhile, but as I say, if you stick with it even to the halfway point, it will probably hook you, and from there drag you -- kicking and screaming but also marveling at how strong a love story this is -- all the way home.

Ain't Them Bodies Saints, from IFC Films and running maybe just a little long at 105 minutes, opens this Friday, August 16, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Walter Reade in Los Angeles at The Landmark Elsewhere? Yes, in around 25 cities over the next few weeks. In any case, it begins its VOD run in just one week on Friday, August 23.

KEVIN's back and Tilda's got him, as Lynne Ramsay's film opens (again) in theaters

If it seems to you as though WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN only recently opened theatrically and was reviewed by most critics, you're right: That was its one-week, end-of-year, "Oscar" qualifying run. Starting this week Lynne Ramsay's movie is back in theaters for a longer stint, which should give audiences a better chance to see this unusually artful and riveting updating of The Bad Seed.

Consisting of one bravura scene after another, the movie is one of those fractured films, the splinters of which are each so well thought-out and crafted that you easily follow what's happening, placing together these splintered scenes to guide you toward... the inevitable. That "inevitable" is both the crowning achievement of Ms Ramsay's movie (the director is shown at right) and its biggest problem.  Is that it? you'll be asking as the final credits roll. And, yes, folk, that is indeed it. There's a hole at the heart of We Need to Talk About Kevin that must remain there because there is simply no single "big" answer to the question that haunts the film, How could this happen? Oh, we get a bunch of smaller answers which, taken together as they must be, offer salient clues aplenty.

This story of a student who goes on a killing rampage is by now old hat -- periodically in the news and in movies made from that news (among them: Elephant, Dark Matter, Beautiful Boy, and now this one). Fortunately, each of these films has its own style plus a nice variation in surrounding content. Ramsay's use of the splintering effect to create tension between past and present, adult and child, and action/response places this film near the top of the heap.

There's a scene early in which a woman approaches our heroine, Eva (another superb performance from Tilda Swinton, above) and suddenly slaps/slugs her. It's a visceral moment, utterly shocking and provocative. While it seems to come from nowhere, we already know enough from the splinters we've seen to understand it deeply -- from both the perspective of the woman who throws the punch and her recipient

Likewise a scene in which Swinton pushes a baby carriage into a zone occupied by a crew of men using jackhammers. Again, utterly odd but fully understandable, given what we already know of Swinton's character, and of her new baby.

The movie is full of these scenes and moments. By film's end, a mosaic has come into shape that fills in a lot of blank spaces around an even larger blank in the center of it all. It's clear Eva should never have become a mother; it's clear that her weaker husband, Franklin (John C. Reilly, as good as ever), is little help; it's clear that there is something horribly wrong with their child Kevin -- played as a toddler by Rock Duer, elementary-school age by Jasper Newell, and as a teenager by the uber-talented Ezra Miller (shown above, from AfterSchool, City Island, Every Day, Another Happy Day). What's unclear is that something could have legitimately been done to correct any of this -- short of enormous (probably impossible, certainly unbelieveable) character change, or abortion, or maybe mercy killing.

The standoff ending makes it clear that there will be no peace here, no cure. The cards are on the table, and finally, at least, everyone knows where s/he stands. What we have here is much more powerful and unsettling than anything that some sort of cheap "closure" might provide.

Nothing in Ms Ramsay's earlier career (the dawdling and disappointing Ratcatcher and Morvern Callar) appeared to pave the way for a breakthrough like this one. Perhaps it was the topic itself that vitalized the woman's filmmaking skills. Whatever, the filmmaker has done an exceptional job, and so have her actors, making the movie one of this new year's must-sees.

From Oscilloscope Laboratories, We Need to Talk About Kevin opens this Friday, January 13, in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and the Angelika Film Center.  The following week will see it play the Los Angeles area, and in the weeks and months to come, it'll be all over the country. Click here for a listing of cities, dates and theaters.