Eye For Film >> Movies >> Surveillance (2008) DVD Review
If you were one of those who found the ending of Jennifer Lynch's Surveillance disappointing, then there is always the alternative ending included as an extra on this disc. The twist is essentially unchanged in these six minutes (which in fact take place a little after the film's 'big reveal'), but the outcome for several of the central characters is radically changed, and the final images, though somewhat more mysterious than those in the completed version, dilute the confronting bleakness of Lynch's final cut. It is all too easy to see why this alternative ending remained on the cutting room floor.
The only other extra is entitled 'deleted scenes', but the plural is misleading. Really this is one long, uncut take, still time-coded and without soundtrack, in which two characters (it would be a spoiler to reveal which two exactly) apply dollops of white cream to each other's face and shoulders in an eroticised dance of mutual masking. It is impossible to guess just how this sequence of surreal sensuality would have fit into Surveillance, but it is itself, in all its animal rawness, a beautiful piece of free-floating film.
Reviewed on: 29 Jun 2009