The Cement Garden (1993)
Genre: Drama
Country: UK | Germany | Director: Andrew Birkin
Language: English | Subtitles: English (.srt file)
Aspect ratio: Widescreen 1.66:1 | Length: 101mn
HDWebrip H264 Mp4 – 1792×1080 – 25fps – 1.93gb
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106535/
This 1993 film is an accurate adaptation of the 1978 novel by Ian McEwan, which surprisingly, was even considered for filming given it’s rather shocking subject matter. Following the death of her husband, a mother-of-four (Sinead Cusack) suffers a mysterious illness and passes away soon after, leaving the children to be self-sufficient. Fearing being taken into care, the older teenage children decide to conceal their mother’s death from the outside world, by encasing her corpse in cement in the basement of the family home. All the children are left to their own devices and live together in the house apparently normally.
However, the eldest teenage children – 17-year-old Julie (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and 15-year-old Jack (Andrew Robertson) begin an incestuous affair – the attraction between them having been brewing for some time. Meanwhile, the youngest boy Tom (Ned Birkin) begins to experiment with transvestism, and his other sister Sue (Alice Coulthard) becomes increasingly withdrawn into herself, only confiding in her diary.
Eventually, the children’s secret world begins to unravel when Julie starts dating Derek (Jochen Horst) and brings him to the house. Admittedly the film is disturbing and very frank about the children’s behaviour. That aside, the performances are very impressive, and we become immersed in the family’s odd world of concrete and rubble.
Recommended to those who’d enjoy a quirky albeit disturbing family drama.
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