Compliance
The kind of
controversy-courting flick that trumpets its torn-from-the-headlines “Based on
a true story” credentials, inspiring walk-outs at film festivals while normally
being met with a disinterested “Meh…” by audiences, Compliance is the latest film to wheel out those
creaky old classics the Milgram Experiment and the Stanford Prison Experiment to illustrate the banality of evil and
the lengths we’ll go to in order to obey an authority figure who gives us
permission to act against our own personal conscience. And it’s definitely not a chance to
have a guilty wee perv over the perky blonde from Don’t Trust The B**** In
Apartment 23 getting
nekkid and being sexually humiliated and abused. No siree Bob, nothing could be further from our minds!
Based on not one
but over 70 true stories across the continental United States, which kinda
makes you wonder just how gullible (or, more disturbingly, how eager) our
colonial cousins are, Compliance sees harried, highly-strung fast-food restaurant
manager Sandra (Ann Dowd)
receive a phone call from an ‘Officer’ Daniels (Pat Healy) who claims that one of Sandra’s
employees, the pretty, young checkout girl Becky (the aforementioned perky
blonde Dreama Walker
from Don’t Trust The B**** In Apartment 23) is guilty of theft and that Sandra should detain
and strip search the girl until he can get there to arrest her.
Held prisoner in
the restaurant storage room Sandra, the restaurant’s other employees and
Sandra’s squiffy boyfriend act as proxies for the prank caller as the
frightened, naïve, compliant Becky is subjected to an escalating series of
dehumanising humiliations on his orders, eventually culminating in a sexual
assault.
Starkly shot and
boasting good performances from all the principals, writer/director Zobel
stretches a pretty thin scenario until our suspension of disbelief snaps. It’s not that the implications of what
he’s showing us aren’t chilling and squirm-inducingly uncomfortable it’s just
that the film has little to say beyond “YOU’RE ALL JUST SHEEPLE! EVERY ONE OF YOU WOULD DO THIS GIVEN
HALF A CHANCE!” No, we wouldn’t. It takes a special kind of
gullibility. Possibly an American
gullibility. But even then, most
people would find it a mite suspicious, certainly unorthodox, if a policeman
told them to search a suspected thief by putting their wee-wee in her
mouth. Just saying.
Cynically, Compliance exploits its audience while indulging our
scopophilia; as much as we sympathise with Becky and are repulsed by her
ordeal, we want to see what she goes through. We’re culpable in her abuse because while the film doesn’t
show us anything particularly horrifying or shocking, (make no mistake, you’re
not watching Salò here)
we want to be horrified, we want to be shocked. And, if we’re honest, we want to see just how perky the
perky blonde from Don’t Trust The B**** In Apartment 23 is. Compliance is a piece of cool manipulation, a film
that’s based around the humiliation, subjugation and sexual assault of an
attractive young woman and has little to offer beyond that. And while the events depicted in the
film are suggested by
truth, things only escalated as far as they did in one documented case. ONE! And that was in Kentucky where they still think the
telephone is the Devil’s Work.
That means that in pretty much every instance the victims smelt a rat and called a halt
to the ordeal before things escalated out of control.
If Compliance teaches us anything, it’s not that most
of us are sheep who will mindlessly, unquestioningly follow orders. It’s that (***minor spoiler
alert***) if you’re
going to make crank calls, DON’T DO IT FROM YOUR OWN HOUSE! That’s not really a good enough reason
to retread an old episode of Law & Order: SVU…
David Watson
Directed by:
Written by:
Produced by:
Starring:
Genres:
Crime, Drama,
Thriller
Language:
English
Runtime:
1 hour 30 minutes
Certificate:
15
UK Release Date:
Friday 22nd
March 2013
Rating:
2/5
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