Now, he tries to come up with an impressionistic arty film in “All I See is You”, starring Blake Lively of “Gossip Girl” who was the girl who won’t get old in “The Age of Adaline” and just had a hit in the shark thriller, “The Shallows”. She plays Gina, the wife of James (Jason Clarke of “Terminator Genisys”), who got blind after a car accident. They live in Bangkok where James works in an insurance company.
After an operation, she gets the chance to see again in one eye and we think the movie’s point is that she gets to re-evaluate her life and marriage after she regained her eyesight. The movie takes its sweet time in unfolding the narrative and we won’t be surprised if you get bored at some point. Why the story has to be set in Thailand is not adequately explained but it gives you the chance to see the city’s beautiful sights, especially the floating market.
The movie can be quite dizzying when it takes Gina’s viewpoints as a blind and later, partially blind, person and everything gets blurred. The hyper-stylized camera work sometimes just gives us flashes of unblended colors with no discernible figures in them. The problem is you don’t fully sympathize with Gina. To begin with there’s no chemistry between Blake Lively and her leading man. The film is supposed to be about the disintegration of their marriage and we never feel invested in their marital relationship.
After she regains her sight, James takes Gina to visit her sister who’s married to a Spanish guy, an artist who has no qualms about wearing women’s clothes and has no compunction asking James: “Are you afraid she’ll leave you for some better looking guy?” Her sister and brother in law take Gina to watch a live sex show, which is common in Bangkok but Gina has never seen it there.
Later on that night, she and James could hear the couple making love noisily in their room. Gina becomes more adventurous in kinky sex and later ties up James and blindfolds him while they’re making out. James backs out but later on, he keeps on watching the video which recorded their sexual adventure.
Meantime, Gina is getting more disastisfied with her husband who she says is not what she expected. She’s unhappy with their condo home and wants to move to a real house. And she’s also frustrated that they can’t conceive a baby. A complication occurs as the film’s climactic third act approaches. Gina has a one-time affair with a hunky acquaintance she meets in the swimming pool and in the park. And quickly gets pregnant. The problem is that a doctor just told James that he’s not capable of having his own baby. Why James didn’t complain at all about Gina being preggers after she informed him about is beyond us.
The director throws in ominous shots of botched post operative eye dropper bottles that seem to insinuate that someone wants Gina to go blind again, there’s also an aging dog who gets overheated, and some guitar lessons with a girl with whom Gina gets to sing the film’s title theme song. But they all don’t add up to much and you leave the theater feeling that you didn’t get a proper resolution of it all as a viewer.
