CACTUS Movie Review

Australia's Paul Cox created one of his most elliptical and mysterious films in Cactus, the story of a woman who has to decide whether or not to have one of her eyes removed so as to possibly preserve the remaining vision in the other. Isabelle Huppert plays the woman, whose dilemma is caused by an accident while she's on vacation in Australia. Things become even more complicated when Huppert falls in love with a man who's blind (Robert Menzies). For Cox, her choice is a jumping off point for larger questions of love and commitment, as well as a contemplation of the subject with which so many filmmakers are obsessed: the way in which we see the world, and how we interpret what we see. Though one of his less well-focused efforts (no pun intended—really). Cactus is still a deeply thought-provoking work from one Australia's least-known but most gifted directors. With Norman Kaye and Sheila Florence (A Woman's Tale).

NEXT STOP … My First Wife, Man of Flowers, A Woman's Tale

1986 95m/C AU Isabelle Huppert, Robert Menzies, Monica Maughan, Sheila Florance, Norman Kaye, Banduk Marika; D: Paul Cox; W: Norman Kaye, Paul Cox, Bob Ellis; C: Yuri Sokol; M: Giovanni Pergolese, Yannis Markopolous, Elsa Davis. VHS ORI