7: Vanishing Waves: Or "A Tale of Two Moles"

This weekend marks the end of the Women In Cinema series at the SIFF theaters.  I wish I could have gotten out earlier in the week to see some of these, but I was stuck at work!  So, I'm catching the tail end.  Most of these movies will not be playing at theaters anytime soon, so you may be annoyed with me for making you want to see them. But, it's good for you to learn to deal with disappointment. Let's think of this as a learning experience for you.

I caught the 9pm showing of Vanishing Waves, a Lithuanian erotic sci-fi thriller, this evening.  And I really, really liked it.  Now... I'm about to make fun of this movie.  You may not have noticed, but that's kind of my thing.  But, I want to start out by saying that it was a really well-made movie.  Visually beautiful, artistic, interesting, well-acted, upsetting, frightening at times, and full of innovative imagery.

That having been said... the main character, Lukas, has a GIANT HAIRY MOLE on his neck.

The movie starts, there are lots of scenes in labs, talking about this experiment where they are going to hook up Lukas to this machine that will mind-meld him to a comatose woman, and all I can think about is this GIANT HAIRY MOLE.

Seriously.  It's the size of a thumb-print.  Right there on his neck. With about 80 hairs sticking out of it.

They even had a scene with his girlfriend shaving his head for the experiment... and they shaved off all his hair... except the mole hair.

Later in the movie, he shaved his face... except the mole hair.

I felt like I was taking crazy pills.

Then we meet the comatose woman in this inception-like-but-way-less-cheesy mind world, and ... she has a smaller, but equally hairy mole on her FACE.

So, Mole-neck meets Mole-face, and they decide to roll around together naked on a hardwood floor for awhile.  They have all kinds of crazy sex.  There's a really upsetting food fight scene that you have to see for yourself.

And then it's game on: Mole-neck vs. Mole-face in the race to see who goes crazy the fastest.

You know, no one even seems to notice the giant moles, either. You'd think one of those other scientists would have said something like, "Hey, why didn't you just shave that mole while you were shaving your entire head? How long is that mole hair? 2 inches? Maybe you should get it scanned. It could be cancerous. It looks pretty gross."

But no.

Other upsetting parts of this movie include a few rapey scenes, sudden bursts of violence, a lot of psychosis, and a lot of suspense. If you can deal with those things, you should try to see this movie if you get the chance.

Other awesome parts include a 3-4 minute shot of Mole-neck running nude under a spotlight (really cool!), hypnotizing CGI representations of brain waves and dream images, and an excellent soundtrack.

Peggy's rating: Three out of Five Stars