REVIEW - THE CANYONS

The culture of the canyons. It is hollow, ephemeral, aesthetic, disposable, artificial. It is shine and sheen, the baking sunlight reflecting off surfaces, penetrating no deeper because there is no deeper there. This is a culture bought rather than earned, invented rather than developed. This is what happens when a country is colonised, and populated by greedy white people with no profound connection to the land they build upon. It's a gleaming new, flashy, arrogant culture, marinated in the toxic stench of empty plastic fakery vacuum-wrapped in more plastic. A trip to the shrink won't do this trust-fund baby any good - the shrink is just another piece in the package of this phony lifestyle, another part of the problem. You can conduct your own cod-philosophy on these soulless shells of vapidity if you want. I took a peek beneath the Botox and saw nothing of much note, save Lindsay Lohan. What she brings to her character is indicative of what brought her fame in the first place: talent. What her personal circumstances bring, though, is invaluable. We'll never know the person whom LiLo could naturally have evolved into, but this is whom she's evolved into instead, and this person is every bit as fascinating anyway. Those puffy cheeks and that trout pout... her illusion is no illusion, and the scars are as visible as the work they betray is there, and they make Lohan the only tangible thing in this film. There's supposedly an erotic thriller in here. It's certainly a sex-obsessed film, and if that doesn't generate the intended frisson, it's welcome all the same. The thriller has no right to intrude on what comes, at intervals, close to being a piquant mood piece, a discerning impression of this zeitgeist. There's no story here, that's the problem, and so no tension, and no surprises. You end up wishing it dead and gone, and that some true trashiness could replace it. Maybe, though, in teasing us with trash, rather than regaling us, The Canyons is a sly commentary not only on this quasi-culture, but also on itself. It's so cheap and vacant that it can't even deliver the tawdry goods it taunts us with. The Canyons doesn't just reflect off surfaces, it actually becomes one of those cold, hard, glinting surfaces.