Clean, Shaven

Clean, Shaven is a 1993 film written, produced and directed by Lodge Kerrigan, in which Peter Winter (played by Peter Greene) is a schizophrenic man desperately trying to get his daughter back from her adoptive mother. The film tries to subjectively view schizophrenia and those who are affected by it.

Clean, Shaven
Directed byLodge Kerrigan
Produced byLodge Kerrigan
Written byLodge Kerrigan
StarringPeter Greene
Alice Levitt
Megan Owen
Jennifer MacDonald
Music byHahn Rowe
CinematographyTeodoro Maniaci Production design by Tania Ferrier
Edited byJay Rabinowitz
Distributed byStrand Releasing
Release date
January, 1993
April 21, 1995 (United States)
Running time
79 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish

The film, Kerrigan's first feature, took about two years to completely finish shooting because he was constantly running out of money. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1994 Cannes Film Festival.[1]

The film was released on VHS in 1993, and for DVD on February 13, 2001.

Plot summary

The film begins with abstract images and sounds in the director's interpretation of schizophrenia. Peter Winter has recently been released from a mental institution and upon his release, must try to experience and understand a world that is all but foreign to him.

Beginning the search for his daughter Nicole (Jennifer MacDonald), Peter's car is hit by a soccer ball. A young girl looks from beyond his windshield at him, and he gets out of the car. No actual images of the girl are shown after Peter exits his car, but the screams of a young girl are heard as if Peter is beating her. He carries a large orange bag into his trunk, and the audience is meant to presume that Peter killed this little girl.

Winter returns home, where sounds invade his very being, and he is never completely at rest. He believes that there is a transmitter beneath the skin on his head and he proceeds to remove it. Peter is also disturbed by mirrors, and typically covers up any mirrors that he can access.

The car that Peter drives becomes encased in newspaper, and he isolates himself from the outside world. Peter comes back home to find his mother Mrs. Winter (Megan Owen) still very disturbed about Peter's schizophrenia. She still treats Peter as a child, and does not want him to find his daughter.

Peter, through his travels, becomes wrapped up in the investigation of the murder of another young girl. Jack McNally (Robert Albert), the detective on the case, is stymied because there is almost no evidence at the scene of the crime. Peter becomes a suspect in the case, but nothing found at the crime scene or in Peter's hotel room can link him to the murder.

That does not stop the detective from following Peter after he kidnaps his daughter from her adoptive mother. Just as Peter begins to reconcile himself with his daughter, McNally shows up, desperate to take Peter in as the murderer. Peter foolishly takes out a gun and aims it at the police officer to try to protect his daughter from McNally. McNally, believing that what he is seeing is the dead body of Peter's daughter, opens fire on Peter, killing him.

He finds the girl to be safe and fires Peter's gun in the air, so that he would not be charged for shooting a man unnecessarily. He then opens the orange bag and finds nothing but newspaper inside.

Cast
  • Peter Greene – Peter Winter
  • Alice Levitt – Girl with Ball
  • Megan Owen – Mrs. Winter
  • Jennifer MacDonald – Nicole Winter
  • Molly Castelloe – Melinda Frayne
  • Jill Chamberlain – Teenager in Motel
  • Agathe Leclerc – Murdered Girl
  • Robert Albert – Jack McNally
  • Roget Joly – Police Photographer
  • René Beaudin – Boy on Bicycle
  • J. Dixon Byrne – Dr. Michaels
  • Eliot Rockett – Man on Ladder / Man in Jeep

Lodge Kerrigan on the film

Lodge Kerrigan: "I really tried to examine the subjective reality of someone who suffered from schizophrenia, to try to put the audience in that position to experience how I imagined the symptoms to be: auditory hallucinations, heightened paranoia, dissociative feelings, anxiety."

"I set it up that Peter, who suffers from schizophrenia, could be the killer, leading the audience down that path, but I withhold proof. There's no conclusive evidence that he is and if people feel that he's guilty, I hope that the picture holds them responsible for drawing that conclusion."[2]

Response

Roger Ebert awarded the film with 3 and a half stars out of four and described it as a film for "anyone with a serious interest in schizophrenia or, for that matter, in film" and praised Greene's performance.[3] The film enjoys a 90% positive score on Rotten Tomatoes based on 10 reviews, with an average rating of 7.78/10.[4] The film has been cited as a favorite by filmmaker John Waters, who presented it as his annual selection within the 2000 Maryland Film Festival.

References
  1. "Festival de Cannes: Clean, Shaven". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 2009-08-30.
  2. Archived December 11, 2006, at the Wayback Machine
  3. "Clean, Shaven". Chicago Sun-Times.
  4. "Clean, Shaven". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2019-07-15.
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