LUMINOUS MOTION

Year Released: 1998 MPAA Rating: R Running Time: 94 minutes Click to Expand Credits: Starring Deborah Kara Unger, Eric Lloyd, Jamey Sheridan, Terry Kinney and James Berland. Directed by Bette Gordon. Produced by Ted Hope and Anthony Bregman. Written by Robert Roth and Scott Bradfield.

If Bette Gordon’s dreamy road movie is intended to be a poignant study of the intense relationship between a mother and her son then it was lost on me. This slow paced film left me with a frustrated feeling by the end. Phillip (Eric Lloyd) and his mom (Deborah Kara Unger) are on the run. Having left her husband, she sells her body for sex, often ripping off her clients afterwards. This has tainted her son in, initially, subtle ways, but as the film progresses it becomes readily apparent that this pre-teen Oedipus is living in his own little dream world. Luminous Motion hardly moves at all. Phillip is an annoying little brat and by the halfway mark you’re hoping for some sort of parental discipline. Deborah Kara Unger seems to be reprising her role in Crash as she sleepwalks her way through this film. It’s just as well because Luminous Motion is a dreary exercise with an unsatisfying finale.

Posted on September 28, 1998 in Reviews by J.D. LaFrance

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