Hippopotamus has an interesting concept, and everything that usually makes me love a movie: an one room scenario with few characters and a script based on psychological exploration. The film tells the story of Ruby Watts, a young woman who wakes up with no memories to find herself kidnapped by a man named Thomas Allcroft. He says he cut the tendons of her legs so she can’t walk and will only let her go once she falls in love with him. Sounds intriguing, and for the most part it really is as the film toys with the themes of memory and how it can manipulated. However, in an attempt to be ambiguous, the movie ends up not achieving its full potential. I am all for ambiguous narratives, but this one feels undercooked, with not enough elements to convey the utterly disturbing implications of the situation it presents, and in the end Hippopotamus becomes not as memorable as it could have been.
Hippopotamus has an interesting concept, and everything that usually makes me love a movie: an one room scenario with few characters and a script based on psychological exploration. The film tells the story of Ruby Watts, a young woman who wakes up with no memories to find herself kidnapped by a man named Thomas Allcroft. He says he cut the tendons of her legs so she can’t walk and will only let her go once she falls in love with him. Sounds intriguing, and for the most part it really is as the film toys with the themes of memory and how it can manipulated. However, in an attempt to be ambiguous, the movie ends up not achieving its full potential. I am all for ambiguous narratives, but this one feels undercooked, with not enough elements to convey the utterly disturbing implications of the situation it presents, and in the end Hippopotamus becomes not as memorable as it could have been.
