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  • Unforgivable
  • Wayward
  • Cutaways
  • My Sunnyside
  • Brigitte’s Planet B
  • How Far Does The Dark Go?
  • Brief History of the LGBT+ Press in Brazil (A)
  • Internal Comms
  • Ghost Empire § Mauritius-Chagos
  • Mothers, Lovers and Others
  • Labyrinth of Lost Boys
  • Gunyo Cholo: The Dress
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  • Chica Quinqui
  • After the Hunt
  • Desire Lines
  • History of Two Warriors
  • Oxygen Masks Will (Not) Drop Automatically
  • Einfach machen - She-Punks von 1977 bis heute
  • Couture
  • Out Standing
  • History of Sound (The)
  • Cinema Jazireh
  • Imagine
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  • Flower Girl
  • Maspalomas
  • Old Guys in Bed
  • Private Life (A)
  • Sane Inside Insanity - The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror
  • Forgetting the Many: The Royal Pardon of Alan Turing
  • Oh, Otto!
  • True Beauty of Being Bitten by a Tick (The)
  • I Know What You Did Last Summer
  • Silencio
  • Cum As You Are
  • I Wish You All the Best
  • Deaf
  • Toxic Avenger (The)
  • Many Deaths of Nora Dalmasso (The)

Asylum

Country: UK, Language: English, 99 mins

  • Director: David Mackenzie
  • Writer: Patrick McGrath; Patrick Marber
  • Producer: David E. Allen; Michael Barlow

CGiii Comment

Hugely controlled - crisp, clean and straight to the point - this is sophisticated film-making.

McKellen is suitably disturbing with his obsession, the rest of the cast simply do a fine job.

MacKenzie makes it look so easy for such difficult genre.


Trailer...

The(ir) Blurb...

In the 50's, the psychiatrist Max Raphael is hired to work as superintendent of an asylum in the outskirts of London, and he moves with his wife Stella Raphael and their son Charlie. Stella has a passionless marriage and is ignored by Max; her boredom changes when her son befriends the handsome inmate Edgar Stark, an sculptor that in a crisis of jealousy had killed and disfigured his wife, and that is treated by Dr. Peter Cleave, an ambitious psychiatrist that aspired Max's position. During the afternoons, Stella has a hot adulterous affair with Edgar until the day he escapes and their affair is discovered. Stella has to take a decision between her family and her wild passion for Edgar.

Cast & Characters

Natasha Richardson as Stella Raphael;
Hugh Bonneville as Max Raphael;
Gus Lewis as Charlie Raphael;
Ian McKellen as Dr. Peter Cleave;
Joss Ackland as Jack Straffen;
Wanda Ventham as Bridie Straffen;
Sara Thurston as Mrs. Rose;
Alwyne Taylor as Monica;
Maria Aitken as Claudia Greene;
Hazel Douglas as Lilly;
Anna Keaveney as Mrs. Bain;
Marton Csokas as Edgar Stark;
Robert Willox as John Archer;
Judy Parfitt as Brenda Raphael;
Sean Harris as Nick