Film

Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in New York, plus articles, trailers and more
 

Tree of Hands (1988)

Director: Giles Foster

Average user rating
No reviews

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This unimaginative adaptation of Ruth Rendell's dark-edged psychological thriller, set in and around London, straightens out most of her subtle twists and kinks, dissipating tension and interest apace. Bacall, loony mom of Shaver (an American writer resident in Hampstead), steals a council estate kid to replace the divorced Shaver's recently deceased child. Shaver, initially horrified, is soon on the horns of a dilemma as the catatonic boy (his back a railway map of weals and lacerations) reawakens her maternal instincts. The abduction is soon broadcast news; a crazy chauffeur (Firth) and enamoured doctor friend (Stoddard) pitch in with their respective versions of sweet-and-sour emotional blackmail. The result is on the whole pleasureless, uninvolving, and visually dull; it reflects little of Rendell's delicious and implicating sense of (a)moral relativism and distaste. Paul McGann, as the stolen child's contemptuous working class father, makes a stab at a performance, but is hauled away into implausibility and gun-toting mania.

Author: WH 0000-00-00 00:00:00

Time Out Film Guide

  • Print this page
  • Send to a friend

What do you think?
Post your review now

clear rating
Min 1 star. Zero stars will be treated as unrated.

*mandatory fields


Cast & crew

Director: Giles Foster

Producer: Anne Scott

Cast: Helen Shaver, Lauren Bacall, Malcolm Stoddard, Peter Firth, Paul McGann, Kate Hardie, Tony Haygarth, Phyllida Law full cast

Genre(s): Thrillers

Duration: 89 mins


Features

Making a name for himself

Making a name for himself

Sin Nombre's Cary Joji Fukunaga learned his lessons well.

To the letter

Forty years later, Costa-Gavras's Z still brims with fury.

Mind over matter

David Cronenberg reflects on a most bizarre body: his own corpus of work.

Fool's gold

Can an Oscar win lead to a cursed career? Here are five stories of postaward professional meltdowns.

We are the championed

Terrorists and teens abound in this year's "Film Comment Selects."

A history of violence

Matteo Garrone's kaleidoscopic Gomorrah wallops you with Italy's crime crisis.

True romantic

James Gray exchanges urban amorality for amour in Two Lovers.

Playing in the dark

MoMA salutes pianist Stuart Oderman's 50 years as the one-man sound of silents.

Junk bonds

Cast and crew recall the making of the classic NYC drug drama The Panic in Needle Park.