I viewed the film a couple times. I had found out about Katrin's death recently and was totally shocked, and I was compelled to see any important work of hers I had not already seen.
I had seen her in Naked, Career Girls, and Breaking the Waves...all very intense and "extroverted" roles.
A reviewer focused on Katrin's power of presence on camera. That is the only really positive thing I can find in Claire Dolan after having viewed it once for the initial impact and then again as a would-be film critic.
I think the above posters all have very legitimate questions about the story line, questions that may be answered in theory, but not certainty. Maybe Kerrigan was working hard to convey the overpowering uncertainty of Claire's sense of identity?
I don't know of many films that succeed at making mental states like uncertainty and boredom interesting.
Maybe Kerrigan was trying to accomplish conflicting goals for his audience. Creating suspense for us requires more than the minimum amount of clues we were provided. I agree with the above poster about lack of info. Creating compassion for Claire requires more character development than we were privy to. Yes, she cried at her mother's bedside, but we were never given any reason to empathize with her, just some mysterious family photos. Creating uncertainty does not necessarily require lack of information and when it does it seems to be at cross purposes with suspense and compassion.
The stilted dialog reminds me of David Mamet's dialog style, almost as if it were in imitation of it.
Maybe Kerrigan wanted his audience to pose the questions above and leave them ultimately unanswered on purpose to make us see something, but if I don't even have a clear idea of that, then all the fragmentation and mechanicalness portrayed in the film just leaves me feeling fragmented and mechanical and ready to move on to another film, probably not written and directed by the same person. I prefer films that lead me to feelings I need to feel, not away from them.
It is very difficult to even talk about such a fragmented film.
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What I found most annoying about it was the parting shot of Claire, disappearing in a field of blinding light once she had seen the first ultrasound images of her son. Mary Magdelaine disappeared the same way in Last Temptation of Christ, but that was a meaningful camera effect. This time all I could think of is, yes, happiness is really just an explosion of pleasant brain chemicals...because as the film portrays, all people are just robots driven by base emotions. I prefer to feel, even for robots, especially for robots. I appreciate a reason to do so.
I am very grieved by the untimely death of Katrin. She played every role to the hilt, even the bad one. Her passion for acting was more than inspiring.
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