Why didn't the film say that it was Quebec. In the film it is said to be Alaska, although we know that it is somewhere in Quebec. In the book the scene where Joanne is identified in the restaurant where she is working, takes place in New Jersey. Given the real-life family of that name, it was probably best to change it. The rich blind man is called 'Forbes' in the book. In the book he tails her for several months through a few murders, which would give him a chance to take a sublet in the building. In the film it is extremely implausible that he is able to get a room next to Joanna in the New York hotel. Obviously the script had to drop a lot of the incidents in the book.

But as the film makes him a Brit in the States, they would be back in Britain. A side-effect of his computer tools etc, is that it becomes more unlikely that he would not be able to find his ex-wife and daughter. I think that the book captures his slipping into obsession better, and part of the picture is that Joanna Eris is about the age that his daughter would have been. At the end of the book he dies of old age. The problem is that Ewan McGregor is too young for the role. I didn't notice that she is played by two actors. We don't have to know that the girl is dead to think of the image of her as a ghost. Also the making the lost daughter's ghost more solid is an interesting effect. The book's Eye is an old-fashioned gumshoe who simply looks though bedroom windows and the like. The major improvement over the book is the addition of the hi-tech snooping equipment. Actually Behm has 13 IMDB credits, and most of them are difficult to find. I can't think of any parallels with Marc Behm's Beatles film 'Help!'(1965). Like Marc Behm's script for 'Charade'(1963) it is about a spook who is looking after a young woman who doesn't really know what is going on.

Like the director, Stephan Elliott's major film, 'Priscilla, Queen of the Desert', 'Eye of the Beholder' is a road movie about eccentrics, one of whom is into wigs and changing her appearance. I would like to see the original film version, 'Mortelle randonnée'(1983) (it has a really good soundtrack album by Carla Bley), but so far have not found a video-rental shop that has a copy. I watched the film twice, read Marc Behm's book and then watched it again. Those naysayers should actually read the posted comments. Despite over 300 comments, some people are still posting saying that it was beyond them and what do the rest of us see in it.

The Eye of the Beholder by Sarah Matts