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| The Passion of Darkly Noon | 
 enlarge | Director: Philip Ridley
Actors: Brendan Fraser, Ashley Judd, Viggo Mortensen, Loren Dean, Grace Zabriskie
Studio: Filmax
Category: DVD
Buy New: $21.98
New (2) Used (3) from $17.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  44 reviews
Sales Rank: 140742
Format: Pal
Languages: English (Unknown), Spanish (Unknown), Spanish (Subtitled), English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language)
Number Of Items: 1
Running Time: 101
UPC: 842001890613
EAN: 0842001890613
ASIN: B000AM1ANE
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | THIS DVD WILL NOT WORK ON STANDARD US DVD PLAYER |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Spain released, PAL/Region 2 DVD:it WILL NOT play on standard US DVD player. You need multi-region PAL/NTSC DVD player to view it in USA/Canada: LANGUAGES: English ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ),Spanish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ),Spanish ( Subtitles ),SPECIAL FEATURES: Interactive Menu, Scene Access, Trailer(s),SYNOPSIS: For his second outing as a director, filmmaker Philip Ridley once again enlisted the talents of Viggo Mortensen, who starred in Ridley's debut, The Reflecting Skin, and co-stars here with Ashley Judd and Brendan Fraser. Fraser plays Darkley Noon, a disturbed young man who received a sheltered upbringing from his strict Christian parents. When the elder Noons pass on, Darkly wanders off aimlessly until he is picked up by a passing truck driver named Jude (Loren Dean). Jude leaves the physically worn Darkly with Callie (Judd) and Clay (Mortensen), a young married couple. As Callie cares for Darkly, he begins to develop romantic and sexual feelings for her, feelings that threaten to turn violent when Darkly is taunted by the love between Callie and Clay.
SCREENED/AWARDED AT: Catalonian International Film Festival, Fantasporto Awards, Stockholm Film Festival,
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| Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...
 This one grows on you... November 20, 2005
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
Well, at least it grows on me. I like Philip Ridley's movies because they usually feature Viggo Mortensen, along with the kind of imagery that my brain produces on its own when it's feeling creative. Go into one of his films, and you're where the id and its lawless hankerings define the world and tell the story. You can best savor The Passion of Darkly Noon if you don't allow yourself to go all left-brained and analytical, because this is not a narrative wedded to factuality, and its psychological realism is selective.
I heard somewhere that Passion was filmed in the mountains of Germany, but the setting is supposed to be the mountains of North Carolina, with which I am personally familiar. So I can vouch that up there it doesn't get protractedly, viciously hot as depicted in the film, but the heat's there for a reason, as symptom and provocateur of unhinged behavior. As the film opens, it's deranging hot, suffering hot; sunlight falls with a punishing coppery sheen on all surfaces, and faces and other exposed areas are slick and oily with sweat. Young Darkly Noon (Brendan Fraser) is a dazed wanderer, the sole survivor of a cult. Apparently the cult's neighbors have gotten sick and tired of the cult in their midst and slaughtered the cult members. Darkly has narrowly escaped this conflagration and fled into the countryside.
After collapsing on the road, Darkly is brought to one of the few homes in the area and taken in by Callie (Ashley Judd), whose lover Clay (Mortensen) is off on one of his occasional extended camping trips in the woods.
Despite the remoteness of her little homestead and the fact that she's alone there (and lacks a telephone to call for backup - many of the modern conveniences don't figure in this story) Callie takes Darkly in. We learn that the people "in town" regard Callie as a witch, and it's easy to believe that she's a disrupting force in the same way as Winona Ryder's character in The Crucible: the best-looking and most overtly sensuous woman in a small, insular, ignorant place has often been at risk for such accusations. Judd's Callie is innocently, pathologically fearless, going in her minimal nightgown to check on her sick guest; one can believe she doesn't really mean to incite him. It's easy to accept Callie as sensual but not vain; her armpits are furry, her golden hair appears to have been hacked with nail scissors, so her often-backlit head resembles a ragged yellow chrysanthemum. Perhaps she does all that she does in a kind of catlike ease within her own skin, not to incite or gratify anyone else.
On her own turf, secure in her convictions, she believes that she controls the situation far more than she actually does.
Skimpily clad, cheerleader legs bare to there, Judd's Callie pads and paces languorously, and once Darkly is awake to notice, he's so riled he can barely say a word to her without stuttering. When Callie discovers that he grew up in a cult and thinks sex is a sin, she endeavors to change his ground-in Christian cultic convictions for her easygoing neopagan views. She won't use his name, nicknames him "Lee," and lectures him earnestly, as adult to idiot child: "Lee, I want to talk to you..." She tries to coax him into a hot spring and, when he refuses, strips to her slip and has her soak with him as a half-delighted, half-consternated watcher. Fraser's face is a study, rubbery and twitchy and somehow unfinished-looking; his changeable eyes continually fight it out between the need to look and the fear of looking. His big body is carried in a childlike way, if you can imagine a six-foot-four, vastly-physically-ill-at-ease child; his stutter is impenetrable. But only until Darkly decides how he should deal with Callie, and then his stride smoothes out, his speech attains perfect fluency.
Callie's arrogance, her assumption that showing Darkly a more comfortable approach to life means that he will/should accept that approach, is an innocent arrogance. Really, it's rather like the Bush Administration's apparent idea that other cultures don't exist in any consequential way and should greet forced reform with open arms and instant compliance-only Callie means well. She also means well when Clay returns and she coaxes Clay to let Darkly join their family.
Now, in real life, I don't believe for a minute that any female that hot thinks for one single moment that she can bring a young, sex-starved, heterosexual male into the "family" of herself and her lover, with whom she's obviously besotted, and expect the arrangement to work out fine for all involved. However, in the world of the film, Callie does expect exactly that. She's wrong; something really, really nasty ensues; her fragile little house gets burned down; poor Clay, while defending her from her psychotic charity case, sustains enough injuries to sideline a whole football team. I will say that one of the star turns in this film is done by Mortensen just before the denouement. At that point, Clay and Callie are deep in some very delightful, semi-rough foreplay, and Clay, in a daze of arousal, is confronted by his rampaging guest, and within a second or so is in full combat mode, fighting for Callie's life and his own. It's a fierce, fabulous scene, with a genuine startle-and-flinch factor that I value - believable, legitimate, genuinely frightening film violence.
A word of caution August 7, 2005
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A word of caution to those that have yet to buy this movie, there seem to be three releases out. American, Spanish and Russian. And all three have conficting run times. This one for example is only 100 mins, while the American release goes on for a whopping 146. The Russian is about 96. Why they differ is beyond me, and why they got cut is also hard to fathom.
Bottom line is check carefully before buying one of these editions, and if you buy an import make sure you're player can support PAL.
 piece of crap April 7, 2005
0 out of 4 found this review helpful
if i could i would put zero dont even rent it you are gonna regret it
 Ridley's Surreal Film Plus The Hairy Armpits Of Ashley Judd! June 17, 2004
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Written and directed by little-known, Phillip Ridley (The Reflecting Skin), 1995's "The Passion Of Darkly Noon" is an almost ethereal Grimm's twisted fairy-tale that turns quicky into spiraling jealousy, self-mutilation, pyschosis and death.A confused young man, Darkly Noon (Brendan Fraser) stumbles into a forest clearing and is picked up off the road and taken to a farmhouse inhabited by a mute carpenter, Clay (Viggo
Mortensen) and his beautiful but very hirsute lover, Callie (a Clorox blonde, hairy armpitted, scantily dressed and very sweaty, Ashley Judd). We discover that Darkly has fled from a strict religious commune/cult which has been ransacked by local rednecks who have shot and killed his parents. While Clay is away, Callie will play and so, Callie decides to "take in" Darkly as one of the family. Darkly lives in the loft of the barn, spies on Callie, lusts after Callie and after Darkly does some "spanking the monkey" in the hayloft while watching her, he is just about to make his move when Clay arrives back home. Darkly is immediately enraged with passion, lust, jealousy and most with religious contempt and righteous indignation! He inflicts pain upon himself, has visions in the woods, and finally has a religious experience that leads him to some "very un-Christianlike" behavior to say the least, smiting everyone in his path. This film is not for everyone. Even fans of Frazer and Mortensen won't approve because they both play roles that are far from their normal typecasting. Although everyone turns in decent performances some viewers might be disappointed. But hey! If you like Ashley Judd, barbed wire and hairy armpits this will be right up your alley! Happy Watching!
Powerful statement May 5, 2004
2 out of 5 found this review helpful
The Passion of Darkly Noon is a strange, mesmerizing film that you can't help but get sucked into when you turn it on. It stars Brendan Frasier, Ashley Judd and an early role from Aragorn - Viggo Mortensen, sporting the same scruff and locks as he did in LOTR. The film is permeated with bizarre imagery, very much dream-like, as another review noted. To me the film deals with the repression of feelings. Darkly Noon, the Brendan Frasier lead, was raised in a cultish Christian community which was pillaged by nearby townsfolk - they killed all of the cult, leaving only Darkly Noon alive. He finds his way onto Ashley and Viggo's ranch where they invite him to stay. From here we see Darkly try to express his sexual feelings for Ashley, feelings which he was never allowed to express as a normal boy developing into a man, and he expresses them in the most horrific ways. The only way he knows how to appropriate his new feelings of lust is by hurting himself - using barbed wire, glass, etc. - and eventually others. It's a powerful statement that feelings left unexpressed (or rather, disallowed to express) will still evince themselves in one way or another, sometimes in very bad ways. We also learn that Brendan Frasier is a great actor and it's unfortunate he always chooses roles like Dudley Dooright and George of the Jungle. The last thing we learn is that Ashley Judd is really, really hot. But we knew that already.
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