Buy it... if you're curious to hear Patrick Doyle's keen melodic and instrumental sensibilities repackage techniques from Bernard Herrmann, Jerry Goldsmith, and John Ottman's music for the thriller genre into an engagingly intelligent hidden gem.

Avoid it... if Doyle's sometimes overstated dramatic sense predictably conveys too obvious of a narrative for you, because he painstakingly emulates the wildly varied emotional state of the protagonist in this otherwise awful sex romp of a picture.

Doyle

Killing Me Softly: (Patrick Doyle) Sex thrillers don't come any worse than Killing Me Softly, famed Chinese director Chen Kaige's only English-language film after a series of critical successes led by Farewell My Concubine. Released initially in Europe, the tale of graphic sex and suspicions of murder was received so badly that it debuted only on cable in the United States, an unrated version on DVD eventually yielding some marginal interest. Its $25 million budget from MGM was flushed down the toilet because of a combination of fundamental problems with the film, foremost a terrible adaptation by Nicci Gerrard and Sean French of an existing novel. Performances by lead actors Heather Graham, Joseph Fiennes, and Natascha McElhone were poorly directed by Kaige as well, whatever passion generated by the sordid nature of the story betrayed by uninspired nude players. A predictable plot twist involving incest and death at the end is a painful epilogue, leaving Killing Me Softly as a carnal spectacle for only those who wish to view Graham and Fiennes engaged in graphic depictions of a variety of kinky sex acts. Fortunately, among the few things Kaige did right with the film was his conception of its music. The director's films have often featured excellent soundtracks (including The Promise in 2005), and Patrick Doyle's output for Killing Me Softly is a lasting highlight. The popular Scottish composer has rarely written music for the thriller genre, but he has confessed to loving working in that mode, and he clearly took the 2002 film more seriously than anyone might have expected. He is, of course, a composer with melodic sensibilities at the core, and he approached Killing Me Softly with a sense of rhythmic orchestral tension and manipulation of theme that many in the mainstream may find similar to Jerry Goldsmith's famous sound for Basic Instinct. For Doyle, this score was among the last he composed on paper before adopting the software available and commonly used by other composers of the era, and he remains proud of the complexity that he wrote by hand into the score's many lines of activity. It is a purely symphonic work, casting aside electronics but emphasizing a hint of tribal percussion in places to accentuate the raw nature of the sexual encounters. In many ways, if Bernard Herrmann were alive at the time, Killing Me Softly is a score that would fit very comfortably in his standard sound for the genre, a compliment to Doyle for the engaging amount of emotive force conjured for this occasion.

Three aspects of Killing Me Softly will impress not only Doyle collectors, but film music enthusiasts in general. First, its dynamic spread of instrumental duties causes the score to utilize every player very wisely. From spritely woodwinds representing love at first sight and romantic violins swaying in the wind for its aftermath to striking bass string and low brass stabs and figures of force for suspicions of criminality and bells denoting death at the end, every application by Doyle to the soundscape in Killing Me Softly is satisfyingly textured. Some listeners may find these utilizations to be predictable, therefore, but Doyle and conductor James Shearman manage to solicit a performance from the ensemble that stands with some of the composer's most evocative career music. At times, when the score begins really cook in its latter half, Doyle applies individual players as striking accents to a rhythmic line (including light percussive tones and quick high flute notes) in manners not dissimilar to John Ottman's Incognito. The second aspect of Killing Me Softly worth noting is Doyle's development of motifs throughout the film. He writes a multitude of ideas that experience intriguing changes as the work progresses. A general theme for the lead character is established in the first few tracks, rollicking in its innocence in "Alice and Jake" but better foreshadowing danger in its elongated, melodramatic incarnation in "Front Titles." A weepy love theme heard first in "Don't Turn Away" highlights the most upbeat moments of the score ("The Wedding" in particular). It's the usual layered string affair for Doyle that his collectors will immediately recognize and love, though the composer's twisting of the idea later in the score, especially in its constant battle with uncertainty and associated shades of dissonance, is marvelous. The dark side of the love affair is treated with a dual-purpose theme that uses pulsations from the deeper strings in waltz rhythms to denote the physical thrusting seen on screen. While unadulterated in "First Fling," the waltz movements are translated more desperate variants almost immediately ("Alice Returns" and "Alice Leaves Jake"). The alluring but cautious reintroduction of the idea by harp in "Silk Scarf (Bondage)" is particularly chilling. By the time the protagonist suspects her husband of possibly being a murderer, Doyle aptly uses the same rhythmic churning to inform the score's main suspense motif. Heard first in "Faxes," this quiet, elegant desperation produces the most engrossing parts of the score. Reprised in "High Suspicions" and at the conclusion of "End Titles," the suspense motif offers the best moments of the score's presentation on album.

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As for the lesser motifs repeated throughout Killing Me Softly, the mysterious husband receives a falsely ominous motif throughout the latter half of the score that denote his wife's fear of him. The driving, static rhythmic force in "Adele's Letters," punctuated by incredibly scary descending trombone lines, continues in "Adam Called" and "The Graveyard," each performance more frantically layered with seemingly haphazard string activity. Finally, a death motif of sorts is applied at about 3:30 into "The Graveyard" and returns in "Deborah Dies," dealing a slight dose of Danny Elfman's most morbid sensibilities into the revelation scenes for Doyle. The demise of the passion/waltz and love themes at the end of "Deborah Dies" is truly accomplished in its intelligence. The same could be said about nearly every moment in Killing Me Softly, the only exception perhaps being the overflowing optimism of the love theme's reprise for the couple's chance encounter in "Two Years Later" (after what they went through, one could debate whether or not the love theme could ever express itself with such Golden Age innocence ever again). The final aspect of Killing Me Softly that requires due recognition is the quality of its recording, mix, and album presentation. The sections are masterfully balanced in the mix, tingling and tapped percussion accents always clearly evident while the whole ensemble is still offered a perfect amount of light reverb. Listeners attempting to find a downside to Killing Me Softly could point to the score's over-thought narrative; Doyle almost goes overboard in his super-careful development of each individual idea, punctuating every false twist in the film with very obvious plays from the ensemble. Whereas subtly in suspicion was the aim, the score sometimes approaches the boundaries of parody without really attempting to do so, though the same could possibly be said about Basic Instinct as well. The "over the top" aspect of Killing Me Softly makes for a very entertaining album however. It was not released on CD until 2011, when specialty label Quartet Records pressed 1,000 copies of the score in a very attractive package featuring crystal clear sound and extensive notation. Since the director mangled and rearranged the score in the final edit of the picture (something Doyle does not seem to have any lingering issues with), the album includes the original versions of four cues that were, in most cases, dialed out or replaced with simple percussive rhythms by Kaige. The resulting album should be a must-buy for any Doyle collector, the score's intelligence in thematic development and instrumental balance proving the composer's mostly unrealized potential in this genre of film. ****   Amazon.com Price Hunt: CD or Download

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For Patrick Doyle reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.85 (in 26 reviews) and the average viewer rating is 3.48 (in 20,137 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.