Maybe it's the cinematic baggage she carries — standing up to slimy "Aliens," locking horns with Harrison Ford in "Working Girl," mingling with apes in "Gorillas in the Mist" and refusing to be intimidated by nasty spirits in "Ghost-busters" — but Sigourney Weaver seems too tough for her role in "Death and the Maiden." You have to wonder if director Roman Polanski made the right decision.
"Death and the Maiden," based on the play, is set in an unnamed South American country, "after the fall of the dictatorship." (Co-screenwriter/playwright Rafael Yglesias is from Chile.)
A theatrical piece, whose stage roots sometimes show through, this three-character drama is set during one night and casts Weaver as the paranoid wife of a famous civil-rights attorney (Stuart Wilson). Eventually, we discover that she was tortured over a period of time some years earlier because she would not reveal the name of a dissident, who later became her husband.
After a few scenes that demonstrate some of Weaver's instability, during which time she hears on the radio that her husband has received a government promotion (a promotion she is apparently not too happy about), Wilson arrives home quite late. It's a dark and stormy night, and he is drenched. And the storm has knocked out the electricity and telephones.
Wilson had car trouble and was given a lift by an odd little man, a doctor (Ben Kingsley) who seems to have an inordinate fascination with Wilson's celebrity. And from the next room, Weaver feels sure she recognizes Kingsley's voice as the doctor who tortured and raped her, when she spent uncountable days blindfolded and imprisoned.
The rest of the film is a cat-and-mouse game, as Weaver tries to get Kingsley to confess, and Kingsley denies being the man she thinks he is. Wilson, meanwhile, doesn't know quite what to do.
Kingsley, as a weaselly doctor who is passive but apparently guilty of something, and Stuart, a man perceived by the public as a saint but who is not so sure he married Weaver for the right reasons, are both superb. And, though she falters in places with occasional weak line readings, Weaver is equally commanding much of the way.
The more serious problem here is Polanski's decision to keep the film housebound, using only camera movements to break things up. The result is a stilted, claustrophobic effect, which he probably expected to raise the level of tension and work in the film's favor. For me, it just made things more artificial.
The title, by the way, refers to Schubert's composition, which was played while Weaver's character was tortured, and which she in turn plays while interrogating Kingsley.
"Death and the Maiden" is rated R for violence, nudity and language.