1994 - DEATH AND THE MAIDEN, drama about political torture is torture to sit through.

For a drama about torture in an unnamed South American country and filmed  in essentially one or two rooms you have to give the director Roman Polanski credit he manages to get in a couple of gratuitous shots of Sigourney Weaver topless.

This was apparently a highly regarded play about the aftermath of a repressive dictatorship that had tortured it's citizens.  The film revolves around the very improbable coincidence that one of the former victims of this torture just happens to meet up with the man who had tortured and raped her.  He has very conveniently given her husband a ride home after his car gets a flat tire, this is a mighty big implausibility to hang a film on.

The film's a three character drama with British and American actors playing Latino types and naturally they don't speak or look very South American.  But the bigger offender is the  dialog which sounds like it's from a stage play and there is way too much of it for the visual medium of a film.

No one could ever say that Roman Polanski was not a talented director, but the reality has always been that with the exception of two or three films he has had a pretty spotty career, Death and the Maiden is another odd film in his odd career.

A filmed stage play with actors shouting stagy dialog at each other, Death and the Maiden should probably have been shut down at script stage it was never going to appeal a general audience.

103 minutes.