Call Me

An erotic thriller that proceeds from the premise of what happens when a woman doesn’t hang up on an obscene phone call, which indirectly leads to her witnessing a police drug murder. Scripted by associate producer Karyn Kay and directed by Sollace Mitchell, both making their debuts here, this Hitchcockian exercise has its share of problemsan indifferently scripted and acted boyfriend (Sam Freed), some stock villains, occasional dawdling in the action and direction. But many of the Hitchcockian ideassexual obsession, female desire, point-of-view shots, and ambiguous identitiesare good ones, a lot more interesting than the standard De Palma rip-offs, and the New York locations and milieu are nicely handled. Kay’s background as a feminist film critic seems to stand her in good stead here, and one wishes that she’d had a hand in the direction as well; Mitchell’s work is earnest but uneven, lacking the drive often found in the script. Patricia Charbonneau is rather good as the ambivalent heroine, and a lengthy phone-sex sequence involving 360-degree pans manages to get pretty steamy as well as suspenseful. With Patti D’Arbanville, Stephen McHattie, and Boyd Gaines. (JR)

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