The Facts:

Synopsis: A blind woman’s relationship with her husband changes when she regains her sight and discovers disturbing details about themselves.

Stars: Blake Lively, Jason Clarke, Yvonne Strahovski, Danny Huston, Ahna O’Reilly, Wes Chatham

Director: Marc Forster

Rated: R

Running Length: 110 minutes

TMMM Score: (6/10)

Review: Here’s a strange little movie for you, not necessarily a bad one, just a strange one. At a time when we’re coming out of a slump summer at the box office and into the terrain of Awards Season, All I See Is You has the visual panache of a major blockbuster helmed by smart filmmakers but is ultimately more interested in the art-house vibe. This creates a discord between two distinct notes that never totally synch up, though it does have a few fleeting moments of harmony that have kept it lingering in my mind several days after seeing it.

Blinded by a childhood accident that left her parents dead, Gina (Blake Lively, The Shallows) lives with her husband James (Jason Clarke, Lawless) in Taiwan. She’s adjusted to her life living in the shadows, only able to see brief glimpses of light (fabulously photographed by cinematographer Matthias Koenigswieser) but when an opportunity presents itself for an experimental surgery that could give her back her sight in one eye, she grasps the opportunity with both hands.

As her sight returns, her relationship with her supportive husband changes as she becomes less dependent on his care and more independent in her needs. The life she thought she was going to lead now has more opportunities and both husband and wife start to realize at the same time that their union may have been fortified by her disability. A visit to her sister and brother-in-law (Ahna O’Reilly and Miquel Fernández) raises more marital strife, compounded by a painful trek to the place where she lost her sight many years earlier.

As the movie develops, it becomes less of the psychological thriller it feels like it wants to be and more of an erotic drama that pushes the boundaries for both Lively and Clarke. Lively seems especially game and she’s continuing to become an actress unafraid of a little risk in her roles. Clarke, too, brings some painful pathos to the part, culminating in a wordless exchange between the two in a very public setting that’s awkwardly intimate though they are surrounded by a crowd unaware of the matrimonial fissure that has cracked wide open.

Director Marc Forster (Quantum of Solace, World War Z) co-wrote the script with Sean Conway and as mentioned above it’s a sometimes off-balance mix of soapy melodrama and kinky canoodling. Up until the last moment, I kept waiting for one tone to come out clearer than the other but it never happens. Even the ending fails to dig its feet in and put a period on its lengthy rambling sentence. While it’s hard to empathize with the two leads that live in a fantastic apartment and jet-set to luxury locales, it’s not easy to write them off for the same reason. Flawed through its characters may be, there’s a voyeuristic interest at play in All I See Is You which makes most everything you see watchable.