The Safe House - Expositions

Robin Williams has a raging need for love that fuels his best work as a comedian and his worst work as a film actor. It's the motor goosing his awe-inspiring torrents of free association on a stand-up stage that's behind such pathetic pap as "Patch Adams" and "Jacob the Liar," and it's woven into Williams's performance as a lonely psycho in "One Hour Photo," too. There are weird resonances between actor and role here, and they're not exactly flattering. I think Williams is aware of them. I hope he is, anyway.

Sy Parrish also desperately wants attention, but where the man playing him found salvation by exploding outward, Sy curls in on himself until he vanishes. He's "Sy the Photo Guy," the chipper, bespectacled blur behind the SavMart photo counter - a man who takes pride in his work, is courtly and solicitous to his clientele, and is especially fond of the Yorkin family. And who wouldn't be? Husband Will (Michael Vartan of TV's "Alias") is a trim, successful bohemian yuppie. Wife Nina ("Gladiator" 's Connie Nielsen) is Pottery Barn elegance personified. Son Jake (Dylan Smith) is the kid we wish we had, or had been.

They are picture perfect, and that is why Sy has covered an entire wall of his Spartan apartment with extra copies of their SavMart snapshots. "One Hour Photo" takes off from the notion that it's anonymous service-industry workers like Sy - the people who give us change and are immediately forgotten - who are privy to the most intimate moments of our lives. What if one of them decided he wanted in?

Thriller fans might remember a terrific 1987 B flick called "The Stepfather." "One Hour Photo" is that film, directed by an art student. Actually, Mark Romanek has made music videos for Madonna and R.E.M., but he slows the beat way down for his first feature and bathes his sets in a sepulchral white. Every shot is precisely framed, just as Sy might want, and eventually all the useless beauty wears you down. The movie establishes from the outset that Sy is a sad little nutcase and then it waits, and waits, and waits, for him to pop his cork.

When he does, it's in unexpected ways and for unsuspected reasons. Sy comes across photo evidence of Will's infidelity, and it sends him into a prim fury; that and the tenderness with which he treats Jake make it clear that he identifies with the boy in ways he can't quite fathom. His revenge is deeply unnerving, all the more so for not following the traditional stab-and-hack path.

It comes too late to save the movie, though, even if Williams gets off a startling monologue at the very end that shines a sudden, cold light into Sy's psyche. His performance is the main reason to see "One Hour Photo," and, at that, only for the way it teasingly reveals aspects of the actor while staying buried in character. Williams uses his hesitant smile, his old gaffer's chin, the eyes that shyly dart away and reconnect - the schtick with which he has asked for our love in the past - and creates a man warped by his need for love. For all the art, it's something of a confession.

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