The only true reaction one can have after watching Charlie Casanova is a neutral reaction. You won't love it or hate it. A couple of moments will stick in your head. One moment in the picture is hilarious. You will however feel duped. You will feel duped because the film is talking to your head and not to your head, heart,gut and lets just say some other places.Charlie Casanova - The Emotional Experience (Take Two) Charlie Casanova must and I mean must be seen for a second time. Once you watch it again the female and male characters make more emotional sense and their own personal situations are heartbreaking and gut wrenching. Of course your heart won't break but the dams of your eyes will.Like all great films; "Charlie" is a sensual experience - it uses the senses well. The use of sound and silence is used quite well in the film. The attention to detail of male/female behaviours is well brought out.People will highlight certain scenes to champion "Charlie" but as always like "Midnight Cowboy" the scene after the famous scene will be the most memorable. Moments of female anquish and male chameleon contorsions will be bypassed as secondary on first viewing "Charlie" but like cream, will rise to the top on the second viewing and will emotionally stun you. This puppy was stunned by the male chameleon contorsions first time round and was emotionally floored by the female anquish scene the second time round. I had to pause the screen.Charlie is the joker in a joker society and we love the joker. The joker has replaced the royalty but the joker is taking royalty payments.We desire the joker and want to be the joker and that is cool but we need to infuse the joker with wisdom, charisma and intelligence in that order to free us from the sexual insanity that is trashing our bodies and our minds.

I like to keep an open mind when going to the cinema. I generally avoid all reviews and press relating to movies on show, depending on word of mouth and personal recommendation instead. I arrived at the cinema expecting nothing, and it dutifully delivered. It was easily the worst film I've ever had the misfortune of seeing. The only positive I could draw from this movie is that it is mercifully short, although seemingly endless when you have to sit through it. Most people didn't bother (there were probably 20 people at the beginning of my showing and around 12 by the end). The dialogue was unintentionally hilarious at times, but mostly cringe-worthy. The acting is of an impossibly low standard. The story line is confused and forgettable. Even the movie itself looks extremely amateur. I'd imagine they were intentionally going for a dark and gritty look, but the technical expertise obviously wasn't there to pull it off.Avoid this film at all costs. N.B.: Aside from the disingenuous 10 star reviews of the film on this very site, the IMDb score is also massively misleading. It has the same ratio of 10* reviews as The Shawshank Redemption, IMDb's number one film of all time. If only real votes were counted, I'd say it would be in the 2 star range.

I agree with the other 1 star review. Don't judge a film on it's budget or production process, judge it on its merits as a piece of emotion inducing storytelling. The director wants you to love this or hate it, he has a immature need for you to have an emotional connection of some sort with his film, feeling that even if you hate it he has done a great job - truth is it's pants. I didn't care enough to hate it, it just made me go 'meh' and shrug my shoulders. It comes across like the director tried too hard to make something that jumps up and down and goes 'look at me, look at me, please notice me!'. He drew shock tactics from a number of well trodden paths and overused sources that seem to have distracted him from infusing his film with the most important ingredient - an engaging story. The acting is so-so, nothing that would help this to stand out but, to be fair to the actors, they were hampered by the script or lack thereof, the main guy (can't remember his name offhand but apparently he was in Hollyoaks..) being the only one to get any sizable screen time, in which he proceeds to chew up the poorly lit scenery. As to the cinematography, well, let's just say there's hope for all those college films that are gathering dust in former film students back rooms - dust them off guys, if this can get a release there's a chance for all your short films shot on grainy minidv, lit with yer da's garden light, with the audio recorded on yer webcam mic.You may ask why I write a review if the film meant nothing to me. Well, it's because I had the misfortune to attend a (free) screening of it with a q&a with the director afterwards. As I sat there in the audience, surrounded with cast and crew and competition winning Hollyoaks fans, listening to the director's expletive ridden pretentious ranting I felt something I hadn't in the previous 1 hour 37 minutes - emotion. And that emotion was disgust. Or maybe I was just a little bloated from the curry I had beforehand. At least that part of my evening was enjoyable.

This is an awkward film, very difficult to enjoy in the traditional sense and once more difficult to categorise. It's part psychotic breakdown, part political dissection, part kitchen sink domestic drama, part offensive (a large part at that,) part nightmare.Charlie Casanova, played by Emmet Scanlan in a career making performance, is an extremely charismatic yet supremely unlikable person. He defines himself as a member of the middle class, with flash cars, flash suits, an IQ of 187 (maybe my IQ isn't high enough but I don't know what this number actually means, what is the difference between 187 and 170?) a seemingly close group of friends and a loving wife. Yet he is bored with his life and proposes a game involving playing cards quite similar to that proposed in the Luke Rhinehart novel The Dice Man - ask the cards a question with a yes or no answer, the card you turn over is either a yes or a no. Most of the questions asked seem to involve illegal acts and sexual behaviour.The journey Charlie takes is occasionally slow moving but largely a difficult watch because his behaviour is so often completely abhorrent. What makes it watchable and in it's own way enjoyable is the incredibly powerful performance from Scanlan and the mostly tight direction from McMahon. He shoves the camera in the characters faces, you feel claustrophobic more often than not, you even (and maybe this is just me) find yourself identifying with the lunatic on screen before realising that his words are just an excuse for his behaviour, this I am pretty sure was intended by McMahon.There is a scene in which Casanova tries some impromptu standup in a working class club, ripping the patrons apart with some very well observed humour before being dragged out of the bar. This scene feels like the one that the movie was written around, it's the strongest in it's content and the way that it was filmed and really pushes the movie forward in to the final act and the (at this point) slightly confusing ending.At times it is a little difficult to understand some of the dialogue; as I have found from my personal experience of the Irish accent, sometimes they speak too fast for me to catch every word, other times the choice of slang is too confusing. But this doesn't actually detract from the film in any way. It may even add to the flavour, the realism of the piece.The final 2 scenes are fantastic and have you leaving the film on a high note; Charlie is on a roof, talking to a camcorder, wild eyed and frantically spouting his political ideals, urging the masses to take some responsibility for their lives, defending his actions, an incredible piece of cinema to end with. And then there's a piece of broken domesticity, a beautiful piece of art that the camera holds on until we fade to back, nothing happens but you can't tear your eyes from it, mesmerising.I would definitely recommend watching this film if you are partial to watching great acting performances in difficult films. It's certainly not for everyone but it is worth your time.