Stars:
Desmond Harrington,
Melissa Sagemiller,
Rip Torn,
Brad Henke
Director:
Robert Parigi
Summary: A man who is unable to form relationships, buys a sex doll and uses it to practice on. Later when he is more confident he forms a friendship with a fellow worker. The doll is left by the wayside and becomes unhappy with the situation...
LOVE OBJECT is the deeply disturbing story of a man and his anatomically correct sex doll. Kenneth (Desmond Harrington) is the star technical writer at a soulless Los Angeles firm. He is robotic and repressed until a colleague shows him a picture of Nikki, a $10,000 sex doll. It's love at first sight for poor Kenneth, and soon he is sharing sex, conversation, and even waltzes with this inanimate object of his dreams. At the same time a new face enters his life in the form of a cute colleague named Lisa (Melissa Sagemiller). The two female figures become entwined in Kenneth's mind and he begins to dress Nikki like Lisa and vice versa. As his real-life romance blossoms, the spirit of Nikki starts to come alive, stalking him in nightmares and dominating him via S&M. Kenneth tries to get rid of her, but learns it's not so easy. That's only the start of the lurid insanity at play in this well-crafted little indie. By the blood-spattered climax it gets almost unbearably intense and unnerving, but before that there's some genuinely nice chemistry between the two leads. Both actors handle the material with enough respect and care that it transcends its Hitchcockian psycho-shocker roots to become genuinely touching and tragic. Rip Torn plays Kenneth's boss and Eurosleaze icon Udo Kier has a fun part as a depraved next-door neighbour.