Killing Me Softly is a cheesy British thriller based on a second rate novel by second rate author Nicci French. Not that I’m necessarily against adapting bad books, in some ways I approve; there’s always the possibility that a filmmaker will create something worthwhile out of the most mundane of source material. Unfortunately, that’s not the case here.
Heather Graham stars as Alice, an American living in London and working as a web designer (Alice must be the only web designer in the whole of the UK to have her own office, wear suits to work and have a secretary!) Stuck in a dull relationship, she bumps into mountaineer Adam (Joseph Fiennes), and it’s lust at first sight. The two of them are promptly shagging at every opportunity and rush into a hasty marriage (depite the honeymoon being a long hike through the Cairn Gorns!) It’s only then that Alice begins to have her doubts: Adam, an intense guy without a sense of humour, seems to have a few skseltons in his closet, not to mention a stash of letters from a former girlfriend who has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Furthermore, it’s also been suggested that he had something to do with a horrible climbing accident a few years earlier, in which several people (including yet another lover) had died. Is Adam actually plotting to kill his new wife? And if not, what really happened to all these vanished and deceased women?
This was directed by multiple-award winning Kaige Chen, and it certainly looks fantastic, but that really can’t help it rise above the rubbish source material. It’s easy enough to watch, but has all the depth of a cheapjack TV thriller. In some ways, though, it actually plays rather like one of the London set giallos of the early seventies (The Case of the Scorpion’s Tail, All the Colours of the Dark). This is partially because it’s shot by an outsider (Chen, like Sergio Martino, displays a rather bizarre idea of life in the UK), has a wayward geographical perspective and has some almost identical sequences (sinister rides in empty tubes, for instance). Even the pseudo-erotic plot is along the same lines, and it’s not too hard to imagine Adam and Alice being played by George Hilton and Edwige Fenech.
Heather Graham is a likeable actress who made a handful of films in the early 2000s in the UK (The Guru, From Hell). Unfortunately, her character in this is a complete idiot, and she also seems to have had a physical transformation into yet another Hollywood pinhead (see also Kate Beckinsale). Fiennes, who seems to have made a career out of bad career choices, is OK, but Adam’s a particularly dour and boring character. The supporting cast features Natasha McElhone (in weird mode), Ian Hart as a peripheral cop, and several other familiar faces.
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