The Plot:
Gabe is a lonely, isolated man. Lost after his wife left him, and even more depressed when he learns she is dying of a terminal disease, he wanders the streets of LA seeking connections and answers. His sadness soon turns into madness and he begins an odd seduction of a woman named Irene. She is trapped in a sexless marriage, and it has made her start questioning her choices in life. After meeting Gabe in a mansion, her second pseudo tryst takes place in a minor suburban home. When confronted, Gabe confesses – he broke into both places so they could have their rendezvous. Initially, Irene is outraged. But her need for a physical connection soon makes her a willing participant in Gabe's pattern. He finds other locales, and sends her the addresses via white matchbooks. They end up in an abandoned warehouse, a hooker's apartment, and most disturbingly, the home of one of Irene's co-workers. All the while, Irene's husband Carl is suspicious. When he finally leaves her, Irene spins out of control. Gabe, too, seems unglued without their time together. Reconciliation seems impossible for any combination of this threesome, since whenever you mess with emotions, personal Erosion always occurs. And in most cases, the damage is irreversible.

The DVD:
My God is Erosion dull! Boring doesn't begin to define this experience in ennui. Partially frozen slugs sitting upon a block of solid ice have more forward momentum than this mind-boggling tedium. Attempting to explain sex and death via felonies and gratuitous games of lust, writer/director Ann Lu has created the first airheaded angst-fest. Long on ambition but substantially short on brains, this dimwitted work of unavoidable bull dung tries to explore the inner workings of the wounded soul. It strives to make sense of properly pointless endeavors like extramarital affairs and terminal illness. To Lu, everything about life has metaphysical significance – the breeze blowing through the trees, a professional gal playing prostitute for her perverted lover, giving hand jobs to locals, even refusing to visit your dying ex-spouse. Sadly, she tries to merge them all into a plotline thick with inferred meaning and subtle statements about the human condition. Yet since we aren't tuned to her particular wavelength – and actually pity those who might be – what we end up with is an endless display of deranged mumbo jumbo. We fail to connect with the characters because, frankly, Lu doesn't intend for us to. As a matter of fact, she doesn't even want that to happen in the narrative proper.

If you dislike self-important whiners who think life is supposed to be fair, make sense, and deliver happiness on perfectly round platters of purpose, you'll truly despise the caustic cast of this film. First and foremost is Gabe the center of this soiled exercise in sex play. As essayed with simmering sloth by Emmanuel Xuereb, this anti-hero is truly hateful. So angry at his ex-wife's infidelity that he won't even visit her on her death bed (boo!) he decides to work out his death issues by seduction and screwing around a career gal named Irene. His plan of action is to imitate Mickey Rourke in 9 ½ Weeks, pushing the boundaries of his evil erotic games until his new butt buddy acquiesces. As Irene, Charis Michelsen in like Michael Meyers' "Shape" in drag. Her face is so appallingly pale white, and here eyes rimmed red with secret sin that she has the effect of haunting her own self. So ghostly is her visage that when she appears in doorways, we wonder who recited "I believe in Bloody Mary" into an on-set mirror. This is not the kind of couple we want to see molesting each other with Maybellene products and having anal sex in suburban backyards. Their canoodling makes even the most amateurish gonzo porn seem like scenes from Last Tango in Paris, both aesthetically and erotically.

With their clothes on, they're much worse. Irene is angry because her basically beige husband Carl won't do the funky chicken with her in the marital bed. So while he tries to avoid her touch, she does a DiVinyl's like deed on her nether regions. Naturally she would be turned on by some reprobate sniffing around her like a tom cat looking for some fencepost feline lovin'. Gabe walks her through his criminally cracked scheme (the whole breaking into people's houses thang centers around the delusion of "stealing their lives", if only temporarily) and like a sinner seeking instant salvation, our horny honey lets this jaundiced Jesus into her frozen heart. Gabe's dilemma does all center on death. While he confronts his dying wife's lover – longtime friend as statue Steve – he really appears to be working through his own wang issues. Lover boy can't get it up unless he's dominating and demeaning a woman (an attempted tryst in the last act with an Asian hooker is proof of his peter problems) and so sex needs to be scary, dangerous and right on the edge of acceptability before he settles in for the slammin'. As leads, we feel literally nothing for these lamentably lost souls. We wish them the dire circumstances they constantly fight against, since such unhappy experiences are what true character is built upon. Without it, they are merely symbols for Lu's own personal problems.

As a movie, Erosion never makes us interested in the final resolution of this complicated case of carnality. Lu tries to be 'tasteful' in her depictions of lewdness, and all this does is render the sequences snooze-inducing. We have to believe the passion in these people to champion their cause. Getting an actress to squeal like a pig is not necessarily an indicator of arousal. Gabe is more or less frigid, only finishing his end of the bargain after overlong moments of tepid tease. The rest of the narrative – the breaking and entering, the suspicious husband, the mysterious phone calls to a breathy, female voice – all orbit around the relationship between our leads. But since it's shaky at best, the movie's other elements never gel. They can't even bother to comment on what is going on between Gabe and Irene. While the extended sequence where the couple copulates in Irene's friend's home offers some mild curiosity, the resulting denouement (a dumb drunken confession) is totally implausible. Indeed, Erosion spends a great deal of time creating complex scenarios only to shoot itself in the foot with lax pacing, under-developed characterization and sketchy, indistinct dialogue. It may all mean something to a generation absorbed by their own selfish sense of purpose, but as an overall entertainment, this film fails miserably. It's just too 'meta' for its own good.

The Video:
Since Erosion has mainstream aspirations (it's written all over the excellent cinematography of the late Neil Fredericks), it's shameful that LifeSize Entertainment offers the film in a non-anamorphic 1.78:1 letterbox presentation. Don't be fooled by the packaging. Though it claims a 16:9 transfer, the image is definitely 4x3. As for the picture itself, there is some slight grain, and an odd sequence where, at least on this critic's DVD, the screen goes blank. Several minutes pass before the movie picks up again, repeating a shot from where the failure occurred. As a result, the image takes on a slightly askew quality, ghosting at the top and bottom third of the frame as the actors move. It eventually fixes itself, though it's definitely disconcerting. Hopefully, it was a fluke of this one particular DVD, but it is something to watch out for.

The Audio:
There is minimal music in Erosion, and the vast majority of the dialogue is spoken in whispers, or mumbled under an actor's breath. Thankfully, the Dolby Digital Stereo presentation is pretty good. We can almost hear every conversation, and when the underscoring arrives, it doesn't drown out the performers. It's not the crispest aural offering, since there is a minor undercurrent of muddiness in the mix, but we do get the overall gist of this junk and that's all that matters.

The Extras:
As self-indulgent as the movie being complimented, the bonus features here are a real chore to get through. First up is a "we're creating ART" style documentary on the making of the film. Though it's loaded with insight, and discusses the contributions made by the cast and the crew, there is just way too much back patting and glad handing to experience in one sitting (the featurette lasts nearly an hour). Similarly, Lu provides us with her "video diary" on the film, and it's more conceited corniness. After all, it's called…"Journey of the Heart". There are more mindless interviews, a pointless collection of three deleted scenes, and a photo gallery. But perhaps the most irritating added content is the full length audio commentary. Spearheaded by actor Emmanuel Xuereb (and moderated by a documentarian connected with the film) it's a long, lugubrious descent into sloppy psychobabble. About the only interesting thing we hear is that the original script, and the final film, are radically different entities. One can only hope the written word was a Heck of a lot better than what ended up on screen.

Final Thoughts:
There will definitely be people who connect with this new fangled 'meta-movie', who ignore the fact that the film has no real emotional core, yet still enjoy the notion of its own cinematic-ness. For those few, seek out this movie and relish its own pompous pointlessness. For anyone else, Erosion scores a clear Skip It. This is filmmaking without the first clue of poignancy or purpose. It is 'art' made up completely of medium-influenced artifice. Ann Lu may have a successful film inside her, and hopefully, when working with something other than her own indulgent words, her true talent will make itself known. But what we have here resonates with ridiculous assumptions about human need and interpersonal desire. Decades ago, the lack of communication between the demographically different age groups was called a "generation gap". It excused an inability to unite by arguing for a different set of life experiences between the participants. The fact of the matter is, the same thing occurs in Erosion. Maturity mires this attempt to break down the barriers between sex and mortality. For those who've yet to experience either, it may all seem like a revelation. But for those well versed in both, it is nothing but nonsense.

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