Customer Reviews

Perfect Alibi

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This movie is one I'd seen years ago, but purchased recently because I did not have it in my collection, and because I've suddenly taken to accumulating Teri Garr movies.

In this somewhat predictable tale, the new nanny, hired so that the mother (played by Kathleen Quinlan) can spend more time at a shop she co-owns with the Teri Garr character, is supposedly brought in from France.

The sweet-faced nanny is obviously someone with secrets and we begin to see, almost immediately, how duplicitous she is.

Not to give away the surprise twists and the ending, suffice it to say that the nanny's sweet exterior is completely fake.

Worth watching.

There is nothing world shaking about this film--it is the tale of an adulterous husband and a homocidal au pair/paramour and their attempts to get free of the lady of the house (Kathleen Quinlan, looking pretty haggard). However, it is nonetheless a very entertaining story, particularly thanks to the talents of Teri Garr and Hector Elizondo. These two, who play the wife's best friend and the cop on the case, have a very nice, comedic chemistry and their pursuit of the evildoers is quite gripping as well as quite funny. The plot, while containing nothing really new, is still engrossing and the suspense level, as it builds, is pretty intense. I found it a very satisfying way to spend a couple of hours.

Based on the novel Where's Mommy Now? By Rochelle Majer Krich, writer director Kevin Meyer's thriller mixes infidelity with serial killing.
Kathleen Quinlan is the wealthy LA wife of Alex McArthur, who has imported French Lydie Denier as an au pair. Denier is one of those French women who can't succeed when they pretend to be dowdy, in spite of someone commenting that she "looks like a nun", so it's hardly a surprise when she is transformed after the ubiquitous clothes shopping expedition, here in a montage set to the song I'm Alive on the soundtrack. Meyer also clues us to the inappropriateness of the Quinlan marriage by their extreme long shot figures in a framed photograph. The irony of this is Quinlan being far more beautiful and appealing than Denier, as well as being a better actor. Regrettably, Quinlan is lumbered with such questions as "Do you love me?" and "Do you still find me attractive?" to clue us into her insecurities about having a younger husband.
Meyer triesto add a comic subplot with Teri Garr co-owning a shop with Quinlan. Garr is primed to be funny, but the material isn't good enough, though her romance with policeman Hector Elizondo raises our expectations. This comic approach is also represented by Seinfeld's Estelle Harris as Garr's aunt, and Anne Ramsay as Quinlan's sister, with the nadir being an autopsy examiner with a cold.
Meyer opens with what turns out as a slighlty irrelevant incident with a glaring application of incriminating fingerprints, and lays on the faux-horror movie music score by Amotz Plessner, which only works during Quinlan's drugged walk down a corridor. The sleaziness of infidelity is presented by a tryst in a motel alongside a train line, and Denier gets unexplained accent dexterity. However the climax features triple cross-cutting, and and there is a cute cut from the switching off of one lamp to another.