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Friday 28 August 2015

Burl reviews The End of August! (1981)



Ha ha, Burl here at summer’s end, presenting to you a review of a fairly obscure period self-actualization tale! The End of August is set in New Orleans in, ha ha, and I’m guessing here, the very last bit of the nineteenth century! It’s hard to tell, because every character seems to be from a slightly different time period, and it may be that this is an intentional attempt to create a strange temporal dislocation, or simply that this low-budget production had to take what it could get from the prop and costume houses!
It tells the tale of the “sensual awakening” of Edna Pontellier, a handsome rather than pretty wife and mother of position! Edna has a husband, Leonce, who looks like a riverboat gambler, and a couple of kids who gallop through the shots when it’s convenient, but are packed off to bed or to relatives in the country whenever the film wishes to concentrate on Edna’s awakening!
Leonce, despite his sinister look, is a decent if old-fashioned fellow, increasingly baffled by his wife’s twentieth-century behavior! He consults with, and gets conflicting advice from, a number of different men, but there’s nothing much he can do! Edna gets a crush on the young fellow from next door, but this entity proves flighty and fickle and self-removes himself to Mexico when the going gets semi-serious! Later comes a horse breeder played by Paul Shenar from Best Seller and The Bedroom Window; he proves a more forthright lover!
Meanwhile there’s much talk of some kind of Gulf Shores legend which centers around the 28th of August, much as the back story of The Fog takes place on the 21st of April! Sad to say, however, that no ghosts manfiest themselves here – if any picture could use them, it’s this one!
For it’s slow going, this movie! We get lots of looks at the houses, paddleboats, jetties and carriages the art department discovered or dug up, and all that is fine – ha ha, I preferred it to the scenes of Edna mooning over her neighbor, or acting like a jerk, or to the Age of Innocence-style scenes of tongues clucking at the impropriety of it all!
The acting is largely decent – Paul “Blue Thunder” Roebling is solid as Leonce, and David Marshall Grant not bad as young Robert from next door! Lilia Skala, try as she might, can’t contort her Austrian accent into a Creole one, but it doesn’t hurt her performance much! The big exception, a crucial one, is Sally Sharp, who plays Edna! Frankly, she’s terrible! Unless her character is meant to have time traveled in from 1981, she sounds all wrong for the period, and her line readings are flat and passionless! She also comes across as not a very nice person, even as one sympathizes with all the paternalistic bunkum and honeydew she has to put up with! But whatever her failings as a performer, Ms. Sharp also produced this picture, so I guess the role was hers no matter what!
Ha ha, as early work from the talented cinematographer Robert “Inherent Vice” Elswit, it at least looks pretty nice, though even decent lensing can’t keep the picture from feeling like a poor American cousin to a 1980s-era episode of Masterpiece Theatre! Don’t get me wrong though: it’s not a bad picture, except for that central performance; but it’s a rather lifeless one! There’s a nice score from Shirley Walker, and some fine stylistic touches here and there, and the kind of local seaside atmosphere I was so sorely missing from Summer Catch (a film I’m still very cross at, ha ha!), but on the whole I’ll have to lay back and give The End of August one and a half paddleboats!

8 comments:

  1. Burl: thx for your review. Where in the heck did you locate a copy of this film?

    ~Phil

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    1. Hi Phil, and you're welcome! As I recall, I just came across a VHS copy at a thrift store or possibly a flea market!

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  2. Hi! I know it's been a long time since you reviewed this, but do you have any idea where I could track this down?

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    1. I'm afraid I don't! I found a VHS copy of the movie by chance, not even realizing it was at all rare; but I've not come across any since! I think the fellow who runs rarefilmm.com is trying to upload a copy, so you might try there!

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    2. He's still looking for a copy, unfortunately. I know him quite well. We're both on the hunt. Thanks anyway. It was nice of you to reply so quickly. I love your reviews.

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    3. I'd be happy to lend him my VHS copy! I know he's down in South America somewhere, but maybe we could figure something out! And thanks very much for the very kind complement!

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  3. Raoul Pontellier21 October 2023 at 14:16

    I just came across this write up. I played Raoul in the film - Edna’s son. I bought a VHS copy on Amazon years ago and it might have been the only one available as I didn’t see it in stock after purchase. I have the best memories from my time on set in the movie but agree with the write up - it’s just not a very good movie. And despite the IMDb cast listing - Dave Chappelle was not in the movie. But there were some people involved that went in to much bigger things - Robert Elswit was cinematographer on Magnolia, There Will Be Blood and others, Mark Lynn Baker was on the sit com Perfect Strangers, John Mcliam from Cool Hand Luke and more. Filmed primarily in Mobile, AL it was a big part of my childhood.

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    1. Well thank you for your comment - I always like to hear from people who were involved in the movies, and I'm glad to hear it was a good time! I certainly was glad to find and watch the movie!

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