"It's as if time no longer exists in this place," mutters one of the characters in this offbeat drama, about three travellers caught in the middle of a particularly dense patch of fog. And, given the film's rambling sense of pace and tendency to jump between the present and 18th century France, it's a pretty accurate comment.
But then, what else would you expect from a movie that throws together former teen heartthrob Luke Perry with the director who was willing to put his name on the awful "Drop Dead Fred", and that features a heavily stylised, near impenetrable, narrative about adultery, child rearing, and psychotherapy?
"Fogbound" opens with its three central characters - Bob (Perry), Leo (Ben Daniels), and Ann (Orla Brady) - broken down on a misty mountainside. It initially plays like a low-budget thriller, in which the relationship between Bob and the married couple he's on holiday with curiously strained.
As the three tell stories about their lives, though, the narrative veers off in all directions. Leo and Ann's marriage counselling sessions are shown as boxing matches. Bob talks about seducing a plump woman who's desperate for sex. And a business trip to Japan finds Leo and Bob sampling some of the stranger delights of the Far East.
Set up like one of Bertolt Brecht's stage plays - where alienating the audience takes precedence over entertaining them - this is offbeat stuff.
Yet, for all its artiness, "Fogbound" spends most of its time teetering on the precipice of ridiculousness.
As soon as Leo starts having flashbacks to his former life as an aristocrat during the French Revolution, it's obvious that it's not just these three characters who're "fogbound" - the whole production seems to have joined them.
Fogbound (2003)
