Piercing

Nicolas Pesce’s Piercing details an eventful night with Reed (Christopher Abbott) as he attempts to fulfil his desire and thirst for murder. Booking into a hotel room and calling on the services of a prostitute as his intended victim instead of those closest to him. When Jackie (Mia Wasikowska) arrives and brings with her a bounty of fetish gear and a sense of sadism, Reed is drawn into her world and the night soon takes a crazy turn.

Nicholas Pesce’s previous film, The Eyes of My Mother, had a great deal of style and craft about it and Piercing is certainly no different. Juxtaposing itself between retro and modern aesthetics what we see on screen is both alluring and intriguing. The use of cardboard/model cityscapes gives a sense of school project to proceedings but, when overlaid with the score, it works really well and feels fresh.

Adapted by Pesce from Ryu Murakami’s novel of the same name, this was never going to be a straight forward film and was never going to go light on the themes or tone. For all the depravity (and that goes for the most high profile of his other excellent novels as well – Audition and In The Miso Soup) and shock, the way that Pesce handles it along with the superb performances from Christopher Abbott and Mia Wasikowska, is to be commended.

My only real issue that I had with it is that it could have done with adding a bit more to the backstory, to take a bit more time to explore the reasons behind their behaviours. As it is we get a cursory and slightly garbled, drug-induced flashback/vision of Reed’s past that could have been expanded on. With a running time of only 81 minutes it could very well handle a few more in this area. But if your only complaint is that you want more of the film then that can’t be a bad thing!

Feeling at times like a cross between American Psycho and Hard Candy, Piercing is stylish, inventive, and absurd. In short it’s a whole lot of fun wrapped up in a whole lot of messed-up!