CARRIED AWAY

At first he can scarcely be recognized behind hornrimmed glasses, a pipe, a cane and a receded, middle-aged hairline. But Dennis Hopper remains one of American cinema's bravest and most intense screen actors, here is an extraordinarily risk-taking performance as Joseph Svenden, 20 years a rural schoolteacher. Living with a crippled leg, a dying mother, an usatisfying affair, and the knowledge that he's soon going to be laid off, Joseph allows himself to be seduced by a 17-year-old girl, new to his school. “It's the first initiative I've taken in years,” he asserts, but is this self-described old man the girl's lover, exploiter, or victim of smoldering discontent and misplaced obsession? Surrounded by a seasoned cast of performers whose reactions are often not what you'd expect, Dennis Hopper makes CARRIED AWAY a foreboding elegy about what is possible and what is forbidden.