Compulsion (Canada, 2013)

Not to be confused with Richard Fleischer's far more famous courtroom drama from 1959, Compulsion (trailer), which is based on a fictionalized account of the Leopold and Loeb murder trial, nor with the subsequently released Compulsion, a.k.a. Sadie (2016 / trailer), a sex-filled horror cum thriller which is about as obscure as this Compulsion but has way more nudity. 

No, this Compulsion here, starring Heather Graham and Carrie Moss, two talented actresses we would like to see a lot more nude and also see nude a lot more, is a threadbare-budgeted remake of a 1995 Korean movie, 301, 302 (trailer)* — the apartment numbers of the movie's two main characters, who live across the hall from each other. 

* 301,302 was South Korea's official submission for 'Best Foreign Language Film' at the 68th Academy Awards in 1996, where it ended up not even being officially nominated, and the award went to the Dutch "feminist fairy tale" Antonia's Line (trailer).

Oddly, Compulsion comes across less as a remake of a conceivable Oscar-contender than as a no-frills filmed version of a stage play. The hyper-Technicolor world of Amy (Heather Graham) and the equally hyper-saturated darks of the world of Saffron (Carrie-Anne Moss), separated by an similarly unnaturally colored hallway, make the extremely artificial two apartments, with their windows to 1950s-style fake skylines,* come across as two halves of a stage set. The feeling of a filmed play, and the artificiality of the abodes, is underscored by the occasional exterior scenes, which are shot with natural lighting and edited quicker, giving them an aura of being tacked on, added later, as a desperate attempt to get the play out of its stage-bound setting.
* Here at a wasted life, we couldn't help but think of the much more prominent but equally fake skyline found in the penthouse apartment of Alfred Hitchcock's Rope (1948 / trailer), with Farley Granger, a movie based on a stage play likewise inspired by the Leopold and Loeb murder.

The narrative of Compulsion concerns the charismatic but unhinged passionate cook Amy (played by an excellent Heather Graham in an almost hyper-real, cartoon-like style). She is forever dreaming of hosting her TV cooking show, and more than once the movie visualizes her imaginary and decidedly not-family-friendly cooking show to share her thinking processes. Amy's narrow, tightly controlled world consists of apartment, boyfriend, cooking and looking absolutely fabulous* (if unnaturally retro) in her almost caricature-like perfect sexy housewife attire. She is, at least by first appearances, the perfect trad wife (if trad wives are your thing).
* The trivia page of Compulsion currently [01 Aug 2024] states that "Heather Graham gained over 10 pounds and wore foam padding underneath her dresses and clothing throughout the film to give her a slightly overweight appearance due to her character's obsession with cooking and eating." However, in the movie she looks in no way overweight (and even less so if you compare her to the average American). If she gained ten pounds for the movie, she is either unnaturally thin in real life or all the weight went to her heavenly heavers, the cleavage of which her character prominently displays throughout the movie.

Trailer to

Compulsion:

Amy's bored boyfriend Fred (Kevin Dillon of No Escape [1994] and The Blob [1988]), the financial buttress of her lifestyle, flies the coop when she cooks him a meal he does not like (there's a lot more to that, actually, but that's the gist of the matter). Alone and on her own, she turns her attention to cooking and the aloof woman across the hall (Carrie-Anne Moss of The Bye Bye Man [2017 / trailer], Frankenstein [2015 / trailer] and Fido [2006]), whom she soon realizes is no one less than the former child star Saffron, whom Amy always adored as a child. And thus the reality-impaired passionate cook decides to use her cooking talent to forge a friendship through Saffron's stomach — not knowing that Saffron, a forgotten and desperate former star, is both damaged goods and bulimic as a result of her upbringing with her devious and unloving stage-monster mom (among other soul-shattering things of her past).

Okay, we watched this movie during our weekly Bad Film night with five other people and, in all honesty, despite the house rule of "what goes in [the DVD player], stays in", for the first time ever the other five almost mutinied and wanted to stop the movie for some other flick. (And this is a group that has, without complaint, survived movies like, say, Dr Chopper [2005], Fortress of Amerikkka [1989] and worse.) Part of the reason was surely the absolutely abysmal sound of the [legal, store-bought] DVD — we ended up using the English subtitles — but also because Compulsion is not exactly exciting, and one person's "intriguing" is another person's "boring". (In other words: we found it intriguing and the other five found it boring.)

Sold as a bloody black comedy, the movie is decidedly low on blood and less a black comedy than a skewed amalgamation of half-baked explorations of inter-relationships, patriarchal abuse, armchair psychology, and toxic friendships. Carrie Ann Moss and Heather Graham both do absolutely fabulous thespian turns in a movie that feels more like a low-budget labor of love of all those involved than a seriously commercial undertaking. Moss goes for a subdued, natural and "realistic" style — watch how her confidence crumbles when suddenly confronted by the producer that abused her as a child — while Graham, her eyes open so wide that they often force you to look into them instead of into her cleavage, goes for an over-the-top, almost sitcom style that truly accentuates her unrealistic perception of her world.

The unrealistic-looking apartments in which the two women usually agitate do distract, particularly since the artificiality clashes so with the non-apartment scenes; it almost comes across as if the filmmakers didn't really have the balls (or at least the cash) to go for a setting of utter unreality, ala the movies of Baz Luhmann, or didn't quite have the finesse to achieve the fantastical unreality of Jean-Pierre Jeunet. For that, the use of color is rather interesting: Amy's world is an explosion of pure color, while Saffron's contemporary world is one of depressing blues and, in the flashbacks to her childhood, is two-toned between grey and slowly fading color.

Do not go into Compulsion expecting the blood or drama the DVD or trailer might infer: the movie is a slow burn and low on both. The ending is also not exactly unpredictable, and the jaded might see it coming in advance (we did). That said, we found the movie oddly mesmerizing, and would surely have found it even more so had the sound not sucked. The movie uses a flashback structure due to the unnecessary presence of the Detective Reynolds (Joe Mantegna of Naked Fear [2007 / trailer] and Thinner [1996]), but could have been easily (and more clearly) told in consecutive order. And despite both a heterosexual sex scene and a lesbian one, the skin quota — which Ann's divine cleavage both demands and promises — is virtually non-existent. The movie is quirky, not exploitive.

Compulsion is not a movie for the masses, and does not try to pander to expectations of the general public. It revels in its quirkiness and artificiality, forgoing a deeper dive into its themes for an almost molasses-like parade of thespian mastery and excellent cinematography. Despite the way the two female actors* master their parts, they sorely lack chemistry, which makes the sudden conversion and bonding in their relationship that occurs towards the end somewhat hard to buy. Indeed, the ending seems somewhat rushed and unresolved, like that of a stage play desperate to end with an O. Henry punchline.
* It's the second time that Heather Graham and Carrie Anne Moss have made a movie together. Way back in 1995/96, two years before Heather Graham burned into everyone's memory thanks to Boogie Nights (1997 / trailer) and four years before Carrie Anne Moss burned into everyone's memory thanks to The Matrix (1999 / trailer), the two were in a forgotten psycho thriller titled Terrified aka Tough Guys aka Evil Never Sleeps (erudite scene).

Director Egidio Coccimiglio has since gone on to make the far more genre-traditional thriller, Cascade (2023 / trailer). As a possible double feature, we recommend pairing Compulsion with the equally unknown but unquestionably better psychological thriller Sonata (2004)... but you might want to do a line before cracking open the beers.