Review of The Cement Garden (1993) by Alyssa N — 01 Aug 2010

Considering how much I loved the book by Ian McEwan, and that I watched the movie less than a week later, I was probably setting myself up for disappointment. That being said, this faithful and haunting adaptation held its own surprisingly well.

There are a lot of strong images in the book, and the movie does a beautiful job of bringing them to life on the screen. The whole cast did a great job, too, including the six-year-old sibling who is actually played by the director's own son.

There's some very disturbing subject matter here, but cast and crew alike manage to take these deeply troubled characters and make the viewers feel like they can actually on some level understand what they're going through.

Read the book if you want to truly get inside their heads, but this isn't a bad substitute by any means.