This is a beautiful looking, odd little film that leaves you wondering what the heck it's really about. It could be the most misconceived woman-in-peril movie in cinema history. It could be about the irresistible human need for companionship. It could be about the relentless affability of New Zealanders. Whatever it's about, I kinda liked it.
Melanie (Rachael Blake) is the boss of a small café in a coastal New Zealand town. One night, she goes out on the town with her girlfriends and finds herself falling for the charms of a stranger (Sam Neill). He invites her back to his boat, where Melanie eventually passes out drunk. When she wakes the next morning, she finds herself stuck on the boat as the stranger steams toward his island home. At first, Melanie is unnerved but then she finds herself again falling for the stranger's charming sincerity. But when his creepy, unexplained obsession with her become unignorable and romantic temper explodes in a moment of violence, Melanie can no longer deny to herself that she's trapped on an island with a crazy person and is in serious trouble.
From that point, the story takes several eccentric turns that aren't at all what you'd expect from this sort of scenario. Whether that's a good thing or not depends on how much you're willing to indulge this movie's peculiarities. It never becomes truly bizarre, yet it's off kilter enough to make you wonder if you're not getting the point the film is trying to make.
Getting past the story, Perfect Strangers is very pretty. The scenery at the island is lovely and put to good use in the film, which has a very clear but subdued visual sense. Whether it's a body on the beach, a thicket of sticks woven together to cover a broken window or something as ordinary as a full bath tub, this movie has several memorable images.
Rachael Blake is a handsome woman who manages to take both the strength and weakness in Melanie and make them both equally real and equally vital. This film takes Melanie in a very different direction and Blake has to subtly bring you along to a situation and a woman you weren't expecting. Sam Neill has to walk a tightrope as the charming stranger who becomes a threatening psycho, because he's never allowed to be simply a deranged stalker. He has to be both threatening and non-threatening, going beyond the two dimensional stereotype suggested by this sort of character.
I liked Perfect Strangers. If you're looking for a melodramatic tale told with steely calm and that takes you in unconventional direction, you might want to give it a try.
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