Ian Gamazon in Person

Living in Seduced Circumstances plunges into the psychology of torture with a resourceful production design and a narrative ingenuity that feel miles away from Saw's one-stop chopping. The dreamlike depiction of violence isn't any more graphic than 24's weekly terror, but there are no release valves in this discomfiting reverie. The film opens with a pregnant woman driving an unconscious older man to a secluded cabin. We glimpse hypodermic needles, and, a few swerving cuts later, the man is bloodied and bound to a wheelchair; as the woman's wanton acts grow increasingly intimate, a history of personal and national dispossession comes into view. As with his acclaimed debut, Cavite (codirected with Neill Dela Llana), Ian Gamazon's extreme economy burnishes a shopworn story (in this case inspired by Ovid's Metamorphoses) with immersive disorientation. While Cavite negotiated the geopolitical boundaries separating San Diego and Manila, Living in Seduced Circumstances traverses an imaginary border into the darkened realm of a fairy tale.