An early-1990s story follows Clark, a failed architect and separated alcoholic who works at a vast discount furniture store while making self-hating pirate-themed TV ads. He seeks therapy from Mary, who sells self-help audio tapes and is haunted by childhood memories of an abusive mother. Clark is forced to sleep in a staged bedroom area inside the store. He later finds a porous wall leading to an infinitely vast network of backrooms containing installation-like spaces and snapshots of alternate versions of reality. Escape proves difficult for both Clark and Mary as the backrooms continue endlessly.
"It’s about people walled up in their own memories, imprisoned in endlessly remembered scenes from their past, or miserably perceived versions of their present existences in which they have become caricatures of themselves, gargoyle stars of their paralysed inner world of failure. Or perhaps the action of the film is not metaphorical in this or any other sense, and the backrooms of the title simply exist."
"Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve give barnstormingly good performances as Clark and Mary; it is the early 90s and Clark is a failed architect, separated from his wife, and an alcoholic who to make ends meet self-hatingly manages a drearily and eerily vast discount furniture store, called Cap'n Clark's Ottoman Empire. He does dumb TV ads dressed as a pirate while uneasily aware he should be a sultan to make the Ottoman empire pun work."
"Poor Clark has to actually sleep in his store, in one of the beds in the little bedroom tableaux, the strange approximations of people's actual living spaces. But one day in the huge basement section, he discovers a supernaturally porous section of wall, through which he can walk to discover an infinitely vast secret network of backrooms strange installation-style areas showing snapshots of what appear to be different versions of reality. And it goes on for ever."
"Clark finds that getting out of this non-Narnia of non-places isn't easy, and neither does Mary when she goes in to look for him. The production design by Dan"
Read at www.theguardian.com
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