A Ghoulish Love Story

THE PHENOMENA of hypnosis, reincarnation, and psychic possession nearly always met with skepticism.

Visions of a seance in which a slightly deranged medium sways in a delirious trance and speaks in the varied voices of the dead immediately come to mind. Return, a new film written and directed by Andrew Silver, approaches this psychic realm from a radically different standpoint. It presupposes the possibility of reincarnation, dwelling on the complex effects of such a psychic return for the characters involved.

At first glance, Diana (Karlene Crockett) seems to be an ordinary young woman. She likes zipping around in her red convertible, blasting her radio, and crawling out from the clutches of her overprotective parents. Almost too coincidently, Diana stumbles across an article in a newspaper describing an unusual young man named Day Whittaker (John Walcutt) who claims that another person lives inside him and speaks through him. To Diana's surprise, the mysterious voice belongs to none other than her late grandfather, Daniel Montross. Quickly, Diana is drawn into a bizarre world in which the past is manifested in the present, insistently calling for recognition.

Day, the young man invested with Montross's spirit, tells Diana that her grandfather has come back to reveal the sordid truth about her parents' past. Diana, in her attempt to unravel this cryptic mesage, somewhat predictably falls in love with Day. Her mission, then, becomes not only to pacify her grandfather's restless spirit, but to liberate Day from this psychic bond which prevents him from forming any more conventional ones with Diana.

A large part of the film's quirky charm is due to Walcutt. He plays Day with an unconscious honesty that makes the character instantly likeable and believeable. Playing Day as something of an innocent, Walcutt's childlike spontaneity endears him to the audience, overriding the distance automatically created by the disturbing facts of his character's possession. Walcutt never overdramatizes Day's bizarre psychic circumstances, relying instead on determined, consistent understatement. Although Walcutt is cast as the film's romantic hero, he manages to avoid this restrictive stereotype, devoid as he is of the plastic good looks required of the typical male lead. Rather, he combines in his own off-beat demeanor elements of both Diana's venerable grandfather and the young Day's own personality.

In her portrayal of Diana, Karlene Crockett is not quite as successful as her co-star, largely because her character is less fully developed than Day's. Given only a two-dimensional character to play, Crockett doesn't explore or experiment. While immediately appealing with her intense, sparkling eyes and her slyly curvaceous smile, she nevertheless lacks the vulnerability that marks Walcutt's performance.

A good deal of Return hinges on the question of identity. Day is stifled and trapped by the spirit of Daniel Montross, a spirit that is sometimes benign and amusing, but more often stridently demanding, driving to fulfill its purpose to return to life. Understandably, Diana is unable to separate the present incarnation from the past life. Although she is attracted to Day, a stronger, more compelling attraction to the voice of her grandfather constantly interferes. This merging of identity, then, is subtly and uncomfortably incestuous.

Ostensibly, Daniel Montross haunts the psyche of Day solely to impart some terrible truth to Diana. It is here that Return falters, for we are never told why this truth must be so urgently revealed, why it could not rest quietly with the dead. Because the necessity Montross's reincarnation is thus called into question, the film's entire premise crumbles. The subject of reincarnation begins to seem more like fanciful ornamentation than a vital compelling force in the plot.

Return often seems like an experiment in extremes. Although this most obviously involves the nature of the plot itself, it also includes the cinematography. At sporadic points throughout the film, cinematographer Janos Zsombolyai presents us with contained scenes of abstract images. Although the calm, picturesque vignettes of nature eventually become somewhat cloying, Zsombolyai's shots of travel along a highway are innovative and exciting. Familiar lines and lights and shapes speed by blended and confused. Simple visual clues are transformed into the physical sensation of actual movement. Unfortunately, these sections of the film are poorly integrated into the film's main body.

In general, Return is plagued by this kind of unevenness. It is clearly not a glossy, meticulously crafted big-budget movie. Perhaps, however, this is exactly what makes it appealing. Return is refreshing in its sincerity and its lack of pretentiousness.