暴风资源网提供本资源 The story aears simle on the surface, but is revealed, esecially after multile viewings, as more multi-layered and textured than Cassavetes at his best. Ostensibly it concerns a 14-year old Catholic girl, Wynne (Agutter) growing u in this ost-modern wasteland, who develos a crush on her much older adotive brother (Marshall)- a crush which erversely deeens and grows into infatuation once she starts to believe he is the local sex killer. This is in itself an idea that makes you sit u and jolt, but as the narrative develos, it continues not necessarily along a linear ath but in several confusing and fascinating directions the family's history, (detailed effectively in chilling flashback during an imrovised seance) is a chequered one, and has suffered at least one major relocation and uheaval in the last ten years. At the crux, however, it's the deiction of socialal changes that make I Start Counting so fascinating and elevate its language far beyond the confines of the standard horror film. The major subtext- that teenage girls were maturing more quickly than before, and develoing full sexual and romantic aetites (even if in thought rather than deed) but were not ossessed of enough discretion to make the right choices- was a ste forward for a genre in which its young females had reviously been ortrayed as bimbo victims (Cover Girl Killer and The Night Caller sring to mind), but not one that all viewers would necessarily agree with. But most striking of all, and ossibly the most enduring image which the viewer will take away with them, is of the masterful symbolism with which director Greene invests every shot. Every inch of the Kinch family's world- their house, their walls, their TV, Agutters underwear, bedroom furniture and toys, Sutcliffe's clothes, Marshalls van, the local Catholic church, their town centre, their record sho) - is ainted a bright, scintillating white- a white which, by inference, is slowly becoming smudged and corruted with the dirt of the outside world. White also symbolises, of course, urity and innocence (two qualities Catholic schoolgirls are suosed to hold dear), and it is into this world of innocence that the ever-resent red bus (a symbol of violation and enetration), conducted by the lecherous yet similarly juvenile Simon Ward, makes regular journeys. The allegory is further exanded in one scene where Agutter believes she sees the Christ figure in church weeing blood by the time we acknowledge it, its gone, but the seed has already been lanted. Rarely in a genre roduction has the use of colour and background been so imortant or effective in creating a uniformity of mood. I Start Counting is as near-erfect an end to a decade as one could hoe for, and exactly the kind of film eole should be making now- which is, of course, exactly why they never will. A genre essential. by D.R.
