9. The Cement Garden (1993)
Jack, Julie, Sue and Tom are four siblings whose father drops dead while working in the garden. Like all good 15 year old boys, Jack is obsessed with masturbation. The family situation grows worse when the mother is bed bound and eventually dies. Fearing they will be put in foster care, the children bury her (with her consent - she doesn't want the family to be broken) in a cement sarcophagus. Jack starts to grow up a bit but stops washing. Little Sue becomes withdrawn and confides everything in her diary. Julie dates a much older man called Derek to Jack's chagrin. Tom, the youngest, starts dressing as a girl. With no adult supervision, the sibling's collective mental health is failing and Derek wants to know what is hidden in the basement. It smells bad. Jack tells him it's a dog but Derek wants to find out for himself as Jack and Julie give in to their latent incestuous feelings. The Cement Garden, adapted from the novel by Ian McEwan, is unlike any other film I have watched. It has a distinct landscape - the house stands on a sea of concrete and there are lots of surreal locations in the movie which stir the imagination. Andrew Birkin has crafted a different and unusual film which is both beautiful and sad - filled with a melancholy air about the fate of the four siblings after losing their parents. The incest in the film is not a gratuitous attempt to shock, it makes perfect sense in the context of the movie. But it does get a bit bizarre with little Tom running round in girl's clothes and everyone just accepting this as normal. The film is not black and white in its treatment of taboo subject matter. There are several shades of grey in the movie which is confrontational for the viewers and the way they interpret the film. A very dark, adult film.