Puffball (2007)

I think I disagree with every positive thing I see written about this movie. I'm sorry I took a chance on Puffball.The story follows a pretty Irish girl, Liffey, while she oversees the completion of her dream home in a remote Irish village. It is a very woodsy area, and there are plenty of scenes in thick forests and muddy farmyards. So it is a very "earthy" movie, and that is what probably drew me to it. Very early on, however, the movie also injects a mystical tone, as we see that Liffey has neighbors who practice some sort of voodoo witchcraft.The tension builds when it is established that Mabs Tucker wants a baby, but is told she is too old to conceive. She turns to her mother, who believes that Liffey's arrival in the area has upset the natural order of things, and that when Liffey becomes pregnant, it is the baby that was "meant" for Mabs which she is carrying. Throughout this exposition, we are shown close-ups of mushrooms as big as a human head with images of a fetus juxtaposed over it. There seems to be some attempt at symbolism, but when the movie was over, I still hadn't figured out what. I was also surprised to see Mabs serving one of these giant puffballs for dinner, carving it like a roast.One of the problems I had with this movie is that there is enough human drama that I feel like they didn't need the mystical subplot. Liffey gets drunk one night and has relations with Mabs' husband (which was initiated intentionally by Mabs and her mother), and through a series of circumstances, believes she has become pregnant by him. It turns out that when she had gotten pregnant earlier in the movie by her fiancé, she conceived twins, one of which she later miscarried. So the surviving child wasn't a result of the drunken hookup (this is established because the fetus is too far along to have been conceived when that happened).Now doesn't that sound like enough twists to fill one movie? Well, they tried to pack much more in there, and I didn't think it worked out very well. Mabs' daughter eventually tells Liffey that her family is using magic against her, and it is also revealed to her fiancé she cheated. Everything comes to a climax at the moment Liffey goes into labor and needs to get to the hospital immediately for an emergency c-section. Except that Mabs won't help her out of spite, and her husband is busy having a fistfight with the guy she cheated with. Will she make it? I thought the ending was very anticlimactic, and that is a big part of the reason I rated this so low. It also got a bit tiresome seeing Liffey with blood running down her legs three or four times, gripping her stomach in pain. A scene like that if effective when used once. The director ends up looking a bit overindulgent, and the nearly two-hour running time doesn't help much either.In closing, I also want to say that a lot of the praise I see written about this movie seems to be from reviewers who end up sounding very pretentious. So if you like to ascribe meaning to vague, symbolic imagery, or you like to focus on attributes like "the architectural quality of film" (???), you may have lots to enjoy with Puffball.

I've just had to sit through Puffball at the Exeter Phoenix screening –where Mr. Roeg graced us with his presence for a listed Q& A session pre the movie viewing…and thank god for 'his' own sake he did. I thought Basic Instinct II was a turkey… but this movie takes bird basting to a whole new level… There's no doubting Nic's past pedigree (40 years ago) with über works such as Walkabout, Don't Look Now and that allegory of our current times The Man Who Fell to Earth… but in his current contemporary offering the only truly menacing character in this supernatural themed movie is Molly's (Rita Tushingham's) Dog… It does the menacing stare very well… though as I know not of the book (original material)…I cannot judge what Fay Weldon's original story had in mind? And interestingly, Mr. Roeg stated pre viewing…that this is a woman's film… which as I saw the movie with three women… all four of us didn't seem to share this heterogamy vision… Major problems with the film are it's done on a shoe string budget… and the characters particularly Liffey lack real depth and any sense of believable credibility… And the monotonous steady delivery of the plot with no twists or unexpected turns also means that you just wish the whole experience would come to a more dramatic, less over acted, swifter end… I kept expecting to have Father Dougal McGuire appear, with Mrs. Doyle in tow… in which case some real farcical humour could have ensued…so at least the 'naff' typical Irish stereotypes could be further exploited… for better comic affect.I imagine as a favour to his buddy from the 1970's - Donald Sutherland's cameo appearances were there to add an A list weight -.playing the mad senior 'deity' partner from Liffey's city slicker, architectural practice past. Poor old Donald wanders around grinning maniacally like a Cheshire cat mumbling words of architectural design guru wisdom, ruefully confessing to having always wanted to see an ancient fertility stone….The continual references to Odin throughout the movie (Norse paganism) for me seemed at odds with the setting of in-depth Celt southern Ireland… but lets not be a stickler for accuracy here… perhaps it should have been shot in Stavanger? The heavy handed use of somewhat unsubtle sound xfx and inappropriate Irish music doesn't help either… and I do suspect greatly with this work that younger members of the team have been overawed by the combined presence of Weldon (by proxy through her son, 2nd unit Director, and screenplay writer Dan) and Roeg into creating a low budget, 2 year film school result, instead of following their own more polished and well-honed intuitions. Miranda Richardson… should really have known better… And as a woman we do 'get' how babies are made on a biological level… seeing frequent cutaways to spermatozoa and uterine membrane walls if over done leaves you feeling somewhat violated… To sum up, I'd recommend seeing this movie for one reason only… it's a testament to triumph of ego over more humble led creative sanity… and you need a film like this every-now-and-then to appreciate what's really good…I saw 2 Days in Paris by the wonderful Julie Delpy last week… this is definitely a 'womans' movie also made on a low budget… and is a remarkable result because of it… And I whole heartedly recommend you all go see that!

Nic Roeg, Miranda Richardson, Rita Tushingham, Donald Sutherland - there were a lot of reasons to go and see this film. However, (and I'm holding back here) - this is the worst kind of unadulterated nonsense I've seen in a long time. It gives me no pleasure to slate this director and cast, but what were they doing? It's a complete mess of a film, highly insulting to it's audience's intelligence and I can't imagine what Nicolas Roeg was thinking of. Obviously these high caliber actors were well paid for the trip to Monaghan, Ireland - but what it was doing being shot there is anybody's guess. The original novel by Fay Weldon set the rural community as Somerset; the film screenplay by her son Dan Weldon doesn't even bother to adjust to it's Irish setting. A focal point is Odin's stone - a Norse god! This film looks set for minority interest; a once great director fallen on his sword, and for the dubious sexual scenes horribly overacted by the floundering cast.

I've seen the first screening on the Transsylvania Film Festival and I must say I was pleased. It strongly relays on Don't Look Now's and Straw Dogs' flavors (intellectual young couple in a new, strange place), but with more psychedelic and sometimes thriller elements. And it's got a really hot sex scene in it. It's old paced and sometimes quite nostalgic, but it's a treat for the eyes. There were a few unnecessary elements though, without which the movie could have been cut to, let's say, 15 minutes shorter and more quick-paced. Roeg could have easily put more emphasis on the scenery/landscape like he used to. But I'm happy to be one of the first people to ever see it.