ESOTIKA EROTICA PSYCHOTICA

POTENTIAL EXPLANATION OF ABSENCE

2011-11-21T22:46:00.000-08:00

I was recently contacted via twitter about a disappointment regarding the complete absence of any esotika activity since basically 2009, even after I announced the potentiality of a periodic web-journal back in July.

Due to the fact that I lack the same capacity I once had to be writing about the films that I wanted to talk about & think about with any regularity whatsoever, I thought the best solution would be to position myself as the sort of curator of a perhaps twice-yearly "journal of film," with each issue dedicated to a director or subject matter that was very much "esotika." The first issue was to be dedicated to Zulawski, due to my absolute obsession with him combined with the fact that there is very little (good) critical or exploratory writing on his work available. The fact that his films are finally being released in glorious editions from Mondo Vision is great, and I feel like all of his masterpieces are no longer (entirely) in the dark to most viewers.

Due to the fact that I'm ultimately selfish, I was intensely picky about the people I solicited to potentially write for the journal, and it took a while for me to come up with a list of people to email (and there is a huge sphere of film writing I'm ignorant of, and I'm sure even more so since I wrote the email). Once I had a decently sized list, I have to be honest that I had a less than spectacular response. I emailed 12 people. Only four people responded with any sort of enthusiasm whatsoever, and while 4 people plus me writing "longer" essays/"whatever"s would have admittedly been enough to fill a modest "journal of film," the project got side-swiped due to how busy my own life is, and how film as a whole has taken the background to other things. Even opening "submissions" on this blog didn't net me a single email.

By this point I'm used to the sort of obnoxious reality that, most of the time, if I want to be reading about something I'm interested in I have to be the one writing about it myself (this is the entire reason that the esotika project, on this blog, ever started). But seeing as I've recently moved across the country & still have no stable job or place to live, combined with all of my other projects (a lit magazine, a micro-press, blogging for a group blog, my own writing & visual art) & the fact that I'm enjoying the social life that an actual city has to offer for the first time, really doesn't leave me with the mental energy to expend on pulling it together.

I still have the same taste in film, and often really wish that I could get it together enough to make it happen, but with how much I already pour my energy into (everything I do I also do for free, which doesn't help me economically unfortunately) I just literally have no room left for this right now.

I do still write about film on the group blog I post at regularly (in fact, apparently I was invited to write there due to my activity over here), but clearly I'm much more heterogeneous in my attention to the arts now. Film is still a major part of my life, and it's influenced so much of what I do that it's not likely I'll ever abandon it entirely. I have vague outlines & notes for a book project on film that I'd like to write one day, much of which I could probably develop by working on the journal, but I really just can't handle taking on another huge undertaking totally independently now.

So, I apologize to everyone who still appreciates what I've done here and hopes that I'll come back to it soon. Maybe I will, maybe I won't, I really can't tell. Maybe esotika will eventually morph into a journal of film, maybe it'll even be a print journal, who knows. That'd be exciting to me, but of course that'd be an even larger undertaking.

Also, for what it's worth, here's the email I sent out to potential contributors to the Esotika Journal Project:

Hello,
I run the website Esotikafilm.com, which was started as, basically, an archive and resource of reviews & information on world-films that I insisted straddled the border between "sex, art, horror & experimentation." A more wide-spread term that seems to tread similar ground has popped up, "post-genre." As you can see from the website, Esotika Film has been virtually inactive since November of '08, and the blog (http://esotika.blogspot.com) has not been updated with original content since September of '09.

For about a year I have been toying with the idea of turning the website into a semiannual (or so) online journal of film, inspired by sites like Rouge.com.au. However, my intention is to remain true to the project's original ideas: I want to remain focused on what, on the current website, I refer to as "esotika films," which could easily be re-aligned as "post-genre" cinema, an expression that China Miéville posits, via Kim Newman, as a "phrase for something which is clearly inflected in a horror way, and clearly emerges out of the generic tradition of horror, but is no longer reducible to it."

I am writing to you because I have encountered either your ideas or your writing on film, and I am specifically interested in soliciting you to write for the project. At the time I can offer no monetary compensation, as the website is of course non-profit, and I am more interested in expanding the realm of discussion and thought regarding often neglected films than I am in profiting from this venture.

The idea I have had is to maintain a consistency within each issue by offering a specific director or idea at the core of each release, in addition to offering less-specific discussions on the idea of something being "post-genre horror" in general, and how one can work with ideas of a 'genre' that positions itself as 'post-genre.' The idea of the post-genre will continue to be the theme of the entire project, while each issue will offer investigations into specific bodies of work.

It is my intention to have the first issue dedicated to Polish director Andrzej Zulawski. This decision comes out of my own, perhaps, obsession with his body as work, as well as with the idea that his oeuvre presents challenges to issues of normal film-making (specifically to ideas of genre) and thus stands as an excellent starting point for the larger project. There has also been a resurgence of interest in his work due to Mondo Vision's recent DVD releases and the dissemination of his films through online, bootlegged sources.

Future possibilities for issue-centers include, but are not limited to: Philippe Grandrieux, Frans Zwartjes & Dutch Experimental film, Paul Sharits, Jess Franco, The films of Kurt Kren & The Vienna Actionists, Thierry Kuntzel, Dore O & Ernie Gehr, Harry Kumel, Renato Polselli & Alberto Cavallone, Roger Watkins & narrative pornography, Jean Rollin, Hisayasu Sato & the shitteno, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Peter Tscherkassky & Dietmar Brehm, and so on.

If you would be interesting in contributing to the project at all, or even becoming a regular contributor (and I hope you are!), please let me know. I'd love to get the first issue live sometime in 2011 if possible. Also, if you know anyone you feel would be both qualified and interested in the project, please pass the information along to them! I'm looking to collect as much quality writing on a mostly obscure 'post-genre' of fantastic cinema.

Thank you,
M Kitchell

UPDATES

2011-07-02T09:35:00.000-07:00

I'm moving across the country and selling most of my DVD collection, along with film books, magazines, and posters. Don't miss your chance to land some rare stuff for awesome prices.

http://www.avmaniacs.com/forums/showthread.php?t=48702

In other news, Esotika will be re-launching as a twice-yearly "journal of film" probably around October. First issue will be dedicated to Andrzej Zulawski. If you'd like to submit an article for publication, please contact mike (at) esotikafilm.com

Franco’s Golden Productions

2010-02-05T10:13:00.000-08:00

My article on Jess Franco's Golden Films International productions is now live on the Severin blog.

I'll be posting it on the redesigned Esotika website in the future as well.

Esotika Plans for 2010

2010-01-19T10:48:00.000-08:00

01 - Redo the website. There is a particular problem in the fact that I used frames so when specific articles or reviews are linked you lose the context of the whole site.

02 - Edit all the old reviews. I basically haven't proofread anything that's on here/the website, and it's severely irritating when I revisit things.

03 - Actually start writing about film again. We'll see what happens.

Also, the only thing I've written about film recently, a piece on Jess Franco's Golden Film Productions, should be appearing on the Severin blog at some point in the new future.

RENATO POLSELLI'S MANIA

2009-09-01T18:44:00.001-07:00

In case you haven't had a chance to see it yet, somebody has posted the trailer to Renato Polselli's once-thought-lost film MANIA. Most of us genre fans found out about the film from Adrian Smith's 1999 book Blood and Black Lace--one of the earliest post-DVD books dedicated to Gialli. Needless to say, the film looks excellent, and since it's been found, I hope it makes its way to DVD sometime.

ARREBATO (IVAN ZULUETA, 1979)

2009-06-21T21:50:00.000-07:00

I have had this film for 3 or 4 years now, and really, I should have seen it long ago. I was only missing out. However, thanks to the wonderful film communities that have sprung up stronger since I acquired my initial bootleg, English subtitles now exist for the film. As mesmerizing as its images are, what gives this film its power are the ideas that are present. The images are hypnotic, having what the film itself could potentially describe as "occult rhythms," but without an idea behind the sublimity present in the super 8 film that populates the film, we'd be left with nothing but aesthetics.

There are several ways I would characterize my relationship to film: First and foremost, I am obsessive. Secondly, I find that a story works best (or is most interesting) when rooted primarily in abjection and the uncanny. I think abjection is an important term when considering this film. For me, the loci of abjection and the uncanny in cinema is met when genre film--particularly horror--intersects experimental. This is an allowance of the fantastic with an allowance of materiality, a performative necessity (as in the film itself is performing an act as we, the viewers, are watching), and an insistence that the qualities of film (image music text; movement, narrative) can achieve more than the inherent, assumed qualities of what is considered the classical Hollywood narrative achieve.

Arrebato itself is at the threshold of genre and experimental cinema. Finding itself with one foot in both worlds, meshed together perfectly, it is a cinema of ideas, a cinema of power. It is a cinema of abjection. We'll start with this.

It's easy to turn to the theoretical construct--developed primarily by Julia Kristeva--of abjection when discussing the horror genre. A primary element of abjection is the idea of "letting go of something we would still like to keep."¹ A dismembered arm, from the perspective of the amputee, is abject. Horror cinema is often a cinema of viscera: "blood, semen, hair and excrement/urine, we recognize these as once being a part of ourselves, thus these forms of the abject are taken out of our system while bits of them remain in our selves."

According to Kristeva, since the abject is situated outside the symbolic order, being forced to face it is an inherently traumatic experience. For example, upon being faced with a corpse, a person would be most likely repulsed because he or she is forced to face an object which is violently cast out of the cultural world, having once been a subject. We encounter other beings daily, and more often than not they are alive. To confront a corpse of one that we recognize as human, something that should be alive but isn't, is to confront the reality that we are capable of existing in the same state, our own mortality. This repulsion from death, excrement and rot constitutes the subject as a living being in the symbolic order.

Arrebato is located in the space of abjection. It's narrative drive is the idea of the "rapture" (the literal translation of "arrebato"), a semi-mystical state of heightened being, a "pause," as Pedro, who is developing the rapture refers to it. When we are first introduced to Pedro, he does nothing but shoot film, an obsession that, we find out, helps him to keep from eating, sleeping, fucking, or shitting for prolonged periods of time. He lives in a state of hysteria, wildly crying as he watches the short fragments of film that he has shot. The only time he can calm down, the only time he can face the reality of humanity, is with the help of "dusty-dust"--heroin.

While Pedro drives the narrative of the film, it is through the world of Jose-- a filmmaker and heroin addict--that this narrative unfolds. Structurally, the narrative of Pedro is embedded within the Narrative of Jose, until the end when the two collapse into each other (almost ontologically). As the film begins Jose is editing a film, a vampire feature that he is visually dissatisfied with. He arrives home from his apartment, after being gone two weeks for a shoot, to find his lover who had formerly left forever, and a parcel from Pedro containing a key, a reel of Super8 film, and an audio cassette.

Eventually Jose sits down to listen to the tape, which retells the story of Jose's interactions with Pedro, as well as the development of Pedro's filmic alchemy. Upon initially meeting Jose, Pedro recognized something special in him, something that isolated Jose as an ally to Pedro's esoteric cause. while Pedro's haunted voice presents the idea that what it is that Pedro can "see" is something mystical, it's obvious to the audience that the only thing that these two men have in common is an utter obsession with the cinema. As Jose remarks early on in the film, “It’s not that I like cinema… it’s cinema that likes me." Jose is presented as akin to real world filmmaker Jess Franco-- despite the fact he doesn't always feel satisfied with what he's done, he has to be making films. Pedro's obsession has already been explained, taking up literally all of his time. For better or worse, both Pedro and Jose are addicted.

This cinematic addiction is paralleled by Jose's relationship with Ana--his ex-lover who formerly left. Their relationship, normal at first, quickly devolved into an intense bond dependent upon heroin to keep it together. The heroin/relationship subplot helps to heighten the intensity of the film, the desperation present, a motivation for the film's denouement: a material example of obsession.

But now we must return to the idea of abjection: "The concept of abject exists in between the concept of an object and the concept of the subject, something alive yet not." Let's consider re-writing this sentence as: What appears on film during cinema exists between the concept of an object and the concept of the subject, something alive yet not. Film's materiality captures a representation of a physical place, a physical person, an action that is literally happen. But what we see when we watch a film is not the actual physical place, it's not the real person, it's not the actual action: what we see is an image. What we see is neither live nor dead; rather, it's a representation of the image.

And this is what the film is about: Arrebato presupposes that film can be more than a representation--it suggests that film has power, and as Roberto Curti points out in his brilliant article on the film, "the image of an object put on film does not share the same ontological reality as that of the filmed object." Eventually, both Pedro and Jose become nothing but film. They are no longer ontologically present in the physical, material world at the end of the film. Rather, they become pure simulacra--a copy without an original. They are ontologically film. The vampiric nature of the camera, brought to life through Pedro's "occult rhythms," has sucked people out of the real world into "film-world."

It is through this ideological construct that a simple jump-cut removing an actor from the frame becomes terrifying. Obsession leads to men away from the "real" world and into something else. A metaphysical afterlife that can be seen but not felt. Pedro knows that he is going to ostensibly "die" as the red pauses on his developed film become longer and longer, yet he prepares himself for and faces his "escape" with both desperate terror and a severe insistence. There is utter beauty in the desperation, and we can feel it in all of Pedro's footage, the pulsing, rhythmic representations of the world moving at an intense tempo: the moon crossing the sky, a penis erecting with the air of flora in bloom, clouds erasing the blue of the air with a mask of white, people moving through life, etc., etc. These images are cinema's pulse, the bloodstream that keeps it alive.

Arrebato itself echos the ideas that it diegetically presents: the film itself holds power over the viewers, calling upon desperation and rhythmic images, coupled with a compelling storyline, to cull the viewer into an active trance-like state. It is mysterious, enigmatic, and compelling. It is a film.

^{1: All quotions pertaining to abjection come from http://www.artandpopularculture.com/Abjection}

2009-06-17T18:54:00.000-07:00

Hi.
I went through all my old entries to delete all the spam comments I've been noticing and realized that there were about 25 comments that I hadn't seen, some over a year old. I finally figured out how to turn on email notifications for comments, so even if it's on something old I should get notified of it. Sorry for any confusion in the past!

LANDSCAPE SUICIDE (JAMES BENNING, 1986)

2009-06-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

Upon initially hearing about this film, I was fascinated by it's combination of structuralist film techniques and a narrative looking into the lives of two very different murderers. I was a bit hesitant to watch the film for a while due to Benning's reputation: from what I understand, he has a tendency to make films full of static shots of landscapes with little to no narrative, films that they tend to be long, considering they seem to be structural experiments (most of Benning's filmography averages the length of a normal cinematic feature, an hour and a half).While organizing some of my movies the other day, I re-encountered my copy of this film and decided to ignore my expectations and watch it.

The film ostensibly examines two murderers: 16 year old Bernadette Protti, who killed a classmate for no discernible reason; and the infamous Ed Gein, who, as any horror fan knows, was the prototype for cinematic manifestations of terror ranging from Norman Bates in Psycho to Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. However, it's Benning's techniques, and how he approaches his source material, that make the film something exciting.

The film is fragmented into two segments, the first half "examining" Bernadette Protti, the second Ed Gein. Each half is approached in the same manner, beginning with what I'll call a prolonged "establishing" shot. The shot sets the tone for the landscape that each crime is taking place in. Protti's story begins with six minutes of a woman repeatedly practicing her tennis serve, representative of the useless banality of life in the suburbs. Gein's half begins with an extended static shot of a desolate, Midwestern landscape: an overcast sky, dead plantlife-- an emotional void.

Following each establishing shot, Benning shots more static landscapes of various elements of each subculture that the murders are rooted in: the posh suburbs and the Midwestern heartland. Eventually fragmented information, delivered via voice-over narration, begins to hint at the subject matter that the film encounters. After many of these flat, banal shots, the viewer encounters the "meat" of each segment: an interview with the murderer reconstructed from "actual court transcripts."

It is during these icy scenes that the film acquires a very abject and emotional core. Benning's camera stares directly at the subject as they answer questions posed by an interviewer off-screen. The actors playing the murderers are flat and unemotional: to viewers they are virtually inhuman.

Protti proves to be the more interesting subject, as Gein already has a major media presence. If we, as an audience, can assume that the dialogue that Benning's film presents is drawn from an actual transcription, then the flat, impersonal delivery that the actress playing Protti provides perfectly highlights the confusion of adolescence. Protti stares into the camera unable to articulate any sort of motivation as to why she killed her cheerleader-acquaintance, unable to externalize, with language, anything that she is truly feeling. It's terrifying to watch, as Protti is very confused, and, despite the stoicism of the film, it's clear that she is also fairly terrified (albeit not out of grief, but rather of what exactly is happening in her own life, the fact that she has completely lost control).

Following the interview, in each fragment, Benning provides static and dynamic landscape shots, punctuating the landscape inspired trance-state (which is generally accompanied by what is understood as diegetic sound) by including somewhat ironic, yet still abject and remarkably sad scenes accompanied by pop music (in the first half, a teenage girls talks excitedly on the phone while a song from "Cats" plays, in the second half, a latent 1950s housewife archetype dances by herself to Patsy Cline's "Tennessee Waltz"). I get the impression that the banality of each landscape is suppose to draw some parallel to the murders, but the film reads better when we consider the landscape, as it is shown to us, as tainted by the banality of the murders. Shots that had no emotional impact shown before the interview suddenly resonate, and the prolonged nature of each scene inspired uneasiness instead of boredom. It's almost manipulation in a remarkably non-manipulative manner: the film simply offers an objective circumstance in which the viewer can consider the implication of each crime, and landscape.

2009-03-30T19:33:00.001-07:00

Hi.

It's been a while since I've posted. I will have a BFA in a month. I saw a movie the other night that actually made me want to start writing about film again. Maybe I will.

I'm not making promises, because who knows what'll happen, but let's just say that for the first time in quite a while, I've been thinking about this project. Hopefully this means good things.

Also:
My Photobucket bandwidth was exceeded, so (most) of the images are down for now. I don't currently have the time to switch all the links reference my web server, and I'm not sure when my photobucket "time-limit" restarts. It will hopefully work itself out soon.

WEBSITE UPDATES

2008-11-12T23:30:00.000-08:00

So, for the first time in eight months (seriously? eight months?) I updated the Esotika website. Updates include:

The last two reviews from here added to the archive
A review of Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely by Dan Schank
(and the big reveal) A career-spanning overview of the engimatic Mario Mercier-- pretty much the most info you'll find on the man in English. Original article by Frederick Durand and translated into English by Mandy Hoff.

CHECK IT OUT

INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA (STEPHEN & TIMOTHY QUAY, 1995)

2008-11-12T11:30:00.000-08:00

ESOTIKA CLASSICK 02

I've lost any conception of what it is exactly that makes a movie perfect for me. I once thought it was a primary aesthetic reaction: a culmination of images and music, with some sort of hyperbolic, mimetic emotionality. A sense of poetry-- but not the poetry of the Romantics, or anything hegemonically beautiful, rather, a poetry of violence, excess, of desperation--all contained within a narrative.

But then I discovered the world of experimental cinema and video art. In video art, aesthetics are eschewed in favor of the immediacy that the medium of video offers. There is nothing beautiful to look at, and sound is often terribly muffled, recorded in camera. But that's not what video art is about, video art is about a concept, it's about an idea. Vito Acconci was not a filmmaker, he was a conceptual artist who occasionally happened to work with a video camera. So do we dismiss this from our understanding of "motion pictures" ? Just because the medium of moving images is used in a different way, this shouldn't exclude an entire genre. It's different, and it forces the viewer to reconsider his conception of what a "movie" is. Experimental cinema does this as well: often an experimental film is more about structure (or once again concept). Narrative is almost consistently overlooked (at least in most well known examples: Michael Snow, Stan Brakhage, etc.). We are now, thanks to Greenbergian modernism, looking at the material qualities of film itself. But some of what was originally contained in perfection shines through. Paul Sharits' repetition and strobing seems awful and obnoxious at first, but further reflection reveals there is a poetry of violence and excess there, and, in a roundabout way, a definite sense of hyperbolic emotionality. The images, though not images you would expect to find in a film, turn out to be beautiful too.

So where does that leave me now? I'm not sure. There is one thing that I am sure of though. Seven years ago I watched the Quay brother's first feature length film, Institute Benjamenta at 5AM before I headed off to a day of my Junior year of high school. I thought it was perfect then. Last night, seeing the film for probably the 10th time, I still think it is.

Has nothing changed? I know that I view film now in an entirely different manner from when I first saw the film. My criteria for what works and what doesn't work is completely different. I don't think I suffer any sort of sentimental attachment to the film either, as I've specifically tried to avoid that throughout multiple viewings: I've never let myself tie the film to a particular part of my life. I know there was something special, exciting about the first time (the first time is always different), but repeated viewings have just shown the film to be better, something new, something better.

When I first saw the film, it was a dream that I wanted to escape in. The film works best when paying careful attention to it's construction of atmosphere. It's oppressive, but in a stunning way. Every single line that Alice Krige mutters as Fraulein Benjamenta is labored, forced out, like she is not sure she should even be speaking, but must. There is a immediacy in her vocal intonation that makes her dialog seem present. Mark Rylance, as Jakob, is completely outside of the film the whole time, which is why Fraulein and Herr Benjamenta gravitate to him, "JAKOB with him one could dare something very Big." He is the clown at the funeral of meaning that the Institute claims to offer.

The set design of the film is what initially made the film so magical to me. The antiquated deer/stag parts decorating every mysterious corridor and doorway, the hyper present texture that everything takes on-- all of this lensed through Nic Knowland's (who got his start shooting John Lennon and Yoko Ono's experimental films) utterly brilliant cinematography, recalling, in a more textured manner, the brilliance of Sascha Vierny.

...

There is an awkward tension throughout the film: Jakob's voice over narration often betrays what is happening on screen. We are told that "the inner chambers contain nothing but a goldfish," while our eyes have already been privy to an entire subterranean level, accessed through awkward doorways located in the center of walls, sometimes created by drawing a concentric circle on a blackboard and walking through it while blindfolded. I don't think that the film suggests that Jakob's imagination is running wild under the domain of repression, rather, I think the world is far more mysterious than Jakob is willing to accept.

A dynamic tension is also constructed via the subversion of narrative. Ostensibly, Institute Benjamenta does have a classical narrative structure: the film begins with Jakob arriving at the institute, the climax occurs with the death of Fraulein Benjamenta, and denoument comes with Jakob and Herr Benjamenta leaving the Institute in the snow. However, these three events are only coincidentally related. The arrival of Jakob does not lead to Fraulein Benjamenta's death (she was already virtually dead), nor does the death lead to the end of the institute (Herr Benjamenta tells Jakob he has closed the institute before). It is arguable that the arrival of Jakob leads to the closure of the institute, but reducing the narrative to an "A, then B" structure is reductive, within the context of the larger film.

As I reach this point, I realize once again that I still don't really know what I'm aiming at here. I suppose, really, that what I'm trying to say, to clarify, is that this is a good film. An amazing one.

2008-10-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

Hey everybody.

I discovered tonight that some e-mail's I've received pertaining to the blog I didn't ever actually see, so if you emailed me about something in the last four months ago and I never replied, this might be why! I might try to go through my email archive and reply to the stuff that is "new" to me, but if there was something extra pertinent you wanted to email me about please send me another email!

Also, new stuff for the site that will probably get put up eventually: An in-depth review of Harmony Korine's Mister Lonely by Dan Schank, and Mandy Hoff's long-awaited English translation of Frederick Durand's career overview of Mario Mercier (originally in French from the apparently now defunct Trash Times website). And who knows, maybe I'll even manage to write something new?

LUCIFER RISING (KENNETH ANGER, 1972)

2008-07-25T21:15:00.000-07:00

ESOTIKA CLASSICK 01

Lucifer Rising exists as an intersection between two filmic ideas, and it is within this intersection that the film gains it's power: more than any other film, Kenneth Anger's Lucifer Rising is about spectacle and hypnosis.

From a level of spectacle the film is pure ritual, literally and figuratively. Juxtaposing mythological images of ancient Egyptian Gods with contemporary Thelemites, Anger delineates the progressive nature of time in order to present to the spectator the necessary elements of the ritualistic form his film is taking. But what makes the ritual appealing to the audience is divorced from this esotericism--it's the nature of the films' aesthetics. Anger's level of artifice is exemplary; hyper-pervasive primary colors permeate every frame, shockingly electrified negative images pop up for brief moments, highlighting both the phenomenon of nature (lightning, volcanic eruptions, the birth of an alligator/lizard) and the exclamation points of banal events (as we tour through the hallway a man absently shuffling a deck of cards suddenly throws them into the air).

Anger's camera--generally static at a fixed angle in all of his films leading up to this one--finally begins to move in the aforementioned hallway scene, which is one of the most enigmatic tracking scenes that I've encountered through all of cinema. As we move through Anger's many tableau with a steady tempo, echoed by the calm score, there is an abject atmosphere of anxiety that arises: the film is telling us that something is going to happen soon, and we don't know what that is, but it's going to be something important.

Bobby Beausoleil's score is another necessary element of the film: composed from his prison cell, Beausoleil's score provides the soundtrack for Anger's film in the only instance where specific music has been produced for the specific film (excluding Jagger's grating drone "composed" for Invocation of My Demon Brother, the rest of Anger's films, as popularly recognized, are simply coupled with 50s and 60s pop music, often to an ironic extent-- there is no irony present in Beausoleil's score for this film). The soundtrack itself is an excellent piece of work, with or without Anger's images married to it. It is a bit psychedelic and ambient, echoing both the naturalistic evocations brought about by Anger's pensive landscape shots, and the internal psychedelia that plays a pivotal role in the film.

Beausoleil's score also plays a major role in elevating the level of hypnosis present in the film; the pulsing score with it's utter repetition and subtle progressive changes feeds directly into the subconscious, the same way Anger's images work their way through cracks. In The Poetic of Cinema, Raoul Ruiz discusses the idea of hypnotic film in his chapter on Shamanic cinema (a more than apt term for Anger's films, to be sure). He sets forth the idea that when a film has an hypnotic element, the viewer may fall asleep. This is not the result of boredom, in fact this opens up, rather, an expanded film for the viewer: the dream world and the film world begin to mesh into a single unity, allowing the viewer to become an alchemist, colliding the "reality" of the film with the subconscious connections the mind brings forth. Being a Thelemite and follower of Crowley himself, an often ignored part of Anger's cinema is the fact that all of his films are "intended as [...] magickal working[s] on the viewer," with Lucifer Rising intending to open "up a wider field of the sublime effects of nature and ancient history" (which relates to the earlier mentioned delineation of past and "present").¹

Anger's magick remains esoteric, unknowable to the viewer. But one thing that can be read without occult historical knowledge is the simple repetitions and geometric shapes that pop up repeatedly throughout the film. The aforementioned hallway tracking scene demands attention, and that attention is shattered, popped, at certain moments. There is a level of control that the image has over the viewer. Same with the stoic profiles of the Gods in ancient Egypt; the camera demands attention, and despite what could ostensibly be classified as camp costuming, these images attain a significant importance. Whereas Jess Franco using languid tracking shots and repetition for the purpose of an extension of sexual ennui, Anger uses the same techniques for the purpose of hypnosis. It is, however, worth noting that both Franco's sexual ennui and Anger's techniques of hypnosis have an aim of ensnarement, a goal of pulling the voyeur/spectator into the diegetic world of the film.

The only problem with the film is that from what people expect of Anger (from a locus of popular culture), Lucifer Rising is more of less at odds with what has generated Anger's reputation: it, to a large extent, lacks the hyper structural editing that initially put Anger on the map, as well as being totally devoid of the pop music that Anger pioneered the music video with. It is also not necessarily indicative of the homosexual avant-garde that Anger often gets lumped in with. The often ridiculed "campy" costumes are merely ritualistic signifiers. They are just conduits to a larger idea that is inherent within a much larger system, and reading the images as nothing beyond camp is discredited Anger as an artist, as a magician. But these are all surface level details-- further exploration into Anger's oeuvre reveals that Lucifer Rising is more accurately a culmination of everything Anger learned in making films. The obsessive fetishism of objects and sensory details is present, as is the already mentioned religious strain that permeates all of Anger's films, and all of this makes it easy to see that this is Anger's best film.

¹ Moonchild: The Films of Kenneth Anger, edited by Jack Hunter

As both an exercise to get myself back into film writing/watching, as well as a way to make myself come to terms with the way I think about cinema, I'm going to start a series of reviews of 'ESOTIKA CLASSICKS.' Which, instead of writing about the obscure or esoteric films that usually decorate my blog, I will be revisiting more common films that exemplify the Esotika spirit and are a core part of the Esotika canon.

I'M NOT DEAD

2008-06-03T19:33:00.000-07:00

So, it has admittedly been 2 and a 1/2 months since I've updated. I apologize; I'm not dead, I haven't given up on this blog or the accompanying website, and in all honesty, I have no excuses. I've just been keeping myself entertained with things other than watching movies for a while (a shocker to those who know me in real life), and have watched maybe three movies in the last two months (Prehysteria 2, Pierrot le Fou, and I rewatched Sweet Movie to write a paper on it for a class that might end up on here, eventually). But, the translation of the long awaited article on Mario Mercier originally by Frederick Durand has been sent my way and once I do a final edit that'll be up on the website. Plus I plan to actually start watching movies and writing about them again soon. In the meantime, here's a couple of video art pieces I've made in the last few months:

PLACER DE GEMIDOS

Placer De Gemidos, as the title suggests, is a structural deconstruction of Jess Franco's brilliant film Gemidos de Placer (which I reviewed back here). My intention was to retain Franco's oneiricism, but flatten the narrative in a way that allows both "everything all at once" as well as drawing attention to the structural way Franco constructed his original film (which I speak about in my review).

THE BAMBI WOODS ENIGMA

This is an extension/re-imagining of a novella/zine I wrote about a year back, where I offer apocryphal explanations for porn-star Bambi Woods' disappearance (for the record, she has possibly shown up again: Debbie Does Dallas: The Bambi Woods Interview). It's aim is essentially to create a mythology of terror, to some extent. And to give credit where credit is due, the structure of the film owes much to the early shorts of Peter Greenaway.

Anyway, that's just some of what I've been up to lately, hopefully I'll be back with a more relevant update soon!

TRAITEMENT DE CHOC (ALAIN JESSUA, 1973)

2008-03-22T21:25:00.000-07:00

I first read about director Alain Jessua in FAB Press's Eyeball Compendium, in which he's described as the "Orson Welles of French cinema[...] he made a big splash, critically and commercially, with his first two features, but then seemed to lose his way and has never really fulfilled the promise he once showed." However, I of course derive much more pleasure out of Welle's later, less polished, less "canonical" films, so I made a mental note to check some Jessua films out.

Jessua is virtually forgotten in discussion of cinema today, and completely unknown in the US. His only film with a domestic DVD release is the 1984 horror-comedy Frankenstein 90, released by Anchor Bay around 2002, only to find itself once again quickly forgotten.

Traitement de Choc is most notorious (although, that's a relative word in this instance) for the fact that famed French actor Alain Delon appears in a rather extensive full frontal nude scene. That seems to be what it's initial selling point was, even being imported and released in the UK by Anthony Balch as Doctor in the Nude, which, in the context of the film itself, seems rather absurd, but hey, I'm sure it sold a few more tickets that way.

The film itself is a fairly conventional dramatic thriller, but it's moral positioning (done in a not-totally-heavy-handed sort of way) and genre elements make it stand out. The story follows Helene Massan's (Annie Giradot) visit at Dr. Deviler's (Delon) "rejuvenation" facility, a closed community which is three parts spa and one part mad-scientist laboratory. At the clinic, Helene encounters a group of vapid, rich men and women who convince her that after the treatment she will feel infinitely better, and that she will be "one of them." Being "one of them" seems to imply nothing more than lounging around a pool sunbathing, frolicking naked on the beach, and talking about how great it is to look and feel young. Nothing of substance constructs the group's relationship, but that's partly the point.

Eventually Helene begins to question some of the facility's techniques, especially as members of the Portuguese help she grows fond of repeatedly get sick and disappear. She later starts sleeping with Dr. Devilers and soon has access to some of the facility's secrets. However, nobody else seems to care about anything other than how they look.

Parts of the film found me thinking of Luigi Bazzoni's Footprints, as well as Robbe-Grillet's L'Immortelle, and occasionally Frans Zwartjes' Pentimento. The first two are evoked due to the first half of the film featuring the female protagonist wandering around by herself, interacting more with the architecture of the facility than the other patients. The latter comes from the interiors of the treatment facility: cold, unresponsive metal and international style white decorate the intensely modern buildings.

One of the more interesting elements of the film is Helene's fairly ambiguous moral stance. She's even asked, several times throughout the film, what is is exactly that she's after. She's obviously after some sort of answers, but she's not quite sure why. On one hand, she clearly feels bad that something is happening to the Portugeuse workmen--but on the other, she is insistent on recalling her physical and mental "youngness" (due only to the fact that she was recently dumped, for the first time ever, for a younger woman). The conflicting interests of Helene help to ease what appears to be Jessua's conviction of the bourgeoisie: he is not flat out condemning them in a heavy handed way (as many political genre films tend to do), rather, the protagonist (whom we inherently identify with as viewers) is placed in a position of confusion. By the end it becomes clear that the treatment is "questionable" (to say the least), but we also understand the desire for youth, a desire that undoubtedly exists in some shape or form in all human beings.

Helene's moral positioning is challenged even further as she takes a plane ride with Dr. Devilers, and he flat out tells her that he finds his patients ridiculous. He states that he would prefer to live with "the so-called savages," but his attempts to do just that have failed due to his outsider status: in this context, he is the other. And so he is now dependent on the wealth brought to him by his wealthy clients.

The climax of the film brings all of the sensational elements that one would hope for in a genre film, and Jessua's creativity doesn't disappoint. It's a fairly abrupt ending (in terms of narrativity), but a bizarre coda posits even the police as shallow, vanity obsessed individuals who place the self over the group, ending the film on a fairly depressing note.

Overall, the film isn't perfect, but is still a very worthwhile watch, if only for the fact to understand how you can make a subtle politically charged film that remains compulsively watchable and entertaining.

MAJOR UPDATES AT ESOTIKAFILM.COM

2008-03-14T01:14:00.000-07:00

Major updates over at the Esotika website:

-Three new reviews (two by me and one by Eric Cotenas)
-My choice of the Top Ten DVD Releases of 2007
-The Library section is now up
-I've started to put up the People section; though the only entry there so far is on Alain Robbe-Grillet (including--I think--the most complete filmography and English-language bibliography on the internet, as well as poster images from ALL of his films except for N. Took the Dice

Also, I have a couple of questions for readers of this blog:

1.
Has anybody had a chance to see Rollin's latest, La Nuit des horloges yet? I know it's played at a couple festivals. If anybody has seen it and would like to write a review of it for the Esotika website, please let me know, as I'd love to have a review of it up there. Same goes for Robbe-Grillet's latest, Gradiva.

2.
Does anybody have a copy of Midi-Minuit Fantastique #13 (November, 1965)? There's a still in it from a "lost" Mario Mercier film that I'd love to include with the Mercier article that will be published soon at the site; if you have a copy and could scan that image for me I would be eternally grateful.

3.
If you have a film blog that talks about films that deal with Esotika themes, please leave a link for me here, as I'm going to update the blog links on the website (and on here) in the next few days.

And finally, an anonymous individual made an RSS feed of this blog for Livejournal. It is available here:
http://syndicated.livejournal.com/esotika/profile
There is also an Atom XML feed available here:
http://esotika.blogspot.com/atom.xml

I will be linking these from the sidebar in the future as well.

LOFT (KIYOSHI KUROSAWA, 2005)

2008-03-14T01:13:00.000-07:00

"I had to do something that was a horror films, but at the same time I wanted to destroy horror films."

-Kiyoshi Kurosawa, taken from a talk given after a screening of Loft at Yale University

Loft is a very peculiar movie. It maintains Kurosawa's trademark eye for atmosphere and horror, yet, as occasionally happens, it feels like a very disjointed film. I don't necessarily find this to be a bad thing, but when sitting down to write about a disjointed film, I find it more difficult to organize my thoughts into something coherent. And coherency, well, that's what one hopes to accomplish with a review. Coherency is also something the movie itself wants to accomplish, and surprisingly, it does.

At least, in a very indirect way. The movie is an odd hodgepodge of terror, atmosphere, melodrama, and subtle comedy. In some ways, the movie is a response to the current state of the Japanese horror film--at least, the Japanese horror film as viewed by the Westerner. A couple of weeks before watching Loft, I had the pleasure of viewing Sion Sono's Exte: Hair Extensions, which maintains a totally different tone from Kurosawa's film, but also subtly ridicules the array of omnipresent cliches that abound in contemporary J-Horror. While I think Sono's film succeeds more in calling attention to the sorry state of J-Horror while still delivering an intelligent and entertaining film, Kurosawa's film works better divorced from the satire. It's there, and it's done fairly well, but if the satire is the only thing the viewer fixates on in the film, he or she is missing out on a lot.

Before I segue away from the satire; it is worth discussing. Most of Kurosawa's satire in the film isn't so much straight up satire in the vein of Month Python or popular television, rather, it's more a subversion of the archetypes that permeate J-Horror, revealing why exactly it is that these cliches are lacking. The long haired ghost, which exists as the most present archetype known to Western audiences, is present in the film. But the "ghost" doesn't move jerkily, is rather just another character on screen, and Kurosawa allows the ghost to remain present uncomfortably long once she has been revealed. By allowing the (expected) source of terror to remain on screen, the terror is diffused and any emotional response the character/signifier would elicit is crushed.

As Jerry White points out in the chapter on Loft in The Films of Kiyoshi Kurosawa: Master of Fear, Kurosawa also subverts archetypes by allowing his female protagonist (his first since 1992's Guard from the Underground) to, through a lack of anchored identity, take on all the roles generally offered to females in J-Horror: the victim, the monster, and the hero. These roles are ostensibly established by three characters (Reiko: the hero, the mummy: the monster, and the ghost: the victim), but all there characters have overlapping personalities-they are essentially three parts of the same whole. By collapsing all of these archetypes into a single character (who, let's face it, in the scope of the movie is an empty shell, a simple signifier for Kurosawa's ideas) he reveals the lack in depending upon the archetypes.

But aside from the subversion of cliches, the film is also a narrative. The story finds Reiko struggling to churn out a pop-romance novel to satisfy her publisher. She moves into a house in the middle of the country to get some peace and quiet. She discovers her neighbor is a scientist working on a mummy. Her publisher goes nuts and tries to kill her. She falls in love. A dead girl pops up. All this implies, of course, is that there is a narrative in the film, the narrative is far from straight-forward.

As usual in a Kurosawa film, the progression relies on the creation and sustenance of atmosphere. Atmosphere, which Kurosawa is always wildly successful at building out of location, is what propels the film forward. There is no central conflict (well, we think there is at first, but that central conflict is utterly abandoned half-way through) to carry the narrative, so we have to give ourselves over to ideas and aesthetics. Also as usual in a Kurosawa movie, it is the atmosphere that makes the movie worth while: sound and image work together so well in the film that it's impossible to not be totally absorbed into the locations on display. Several abject "jump shock" scenes make perfect use of the natural light and old house that Reiko is living in, and the heavy atmosphere manages to approach a climax without plummeting immediately afterwards. The intense atmosphere is sustained throughout the entire first hour and a half of the film.

And that's when things change.

Out of nowhere, Reiko and Yoshioka begin speaking to each other as if they're living in a Douglas Sirk melodrama: music swells, and the two run to each others arms professing their love for one another. An empty grave lies in the background. It's jarring: in the same way "jump shocks" work within the realm of generic J-Horror, this change is constructed to be surprising. From this point on, Reiko is no longer the films center; she's thrown to the background and Kurosawa's camera starts to linger on Yoshioka instead. An attack mars their brief foray into the land of emotions, and soon everyone is back to their apathetic and empty selves.

But, it is the fact that these characters are completely empty and apathetic that allows this melodramatic interlude to occur without distorting the film into something incoherent: when you have nothing, the first chance to attach yourself, fill yourself, achieves a sense of epic proportions. The overly dramatic scene really fits perfectly with the rest of the subtle, understated, and almost silent film. Thesis + Antithesis = Synthesis. Kurosawa's realization of that is wonderful, and the cinematic approach to his revelation is even more impressive.

If there's anything that needs to be said about the film it's this: in an interview Kurosawa mentioned the film being an "experiment in terror." And for that, I applaud. Loft doesn't get tied up trying to maintain itself in an overdone, unnecessary plot. One of the primary perks of making films is the ability to both establish emotions and inspire emotions in fairly straightforward way (when done well)--and that is what Kurosawa does here. It's an experiment in atmosphere, and experiment in applying theory to practice, and overall it's a stunning aestheticized experiment. A fulfilling one, at that.

I WAS A TEENAGE ZABBADOING (CARL ANDERSEN, 1988)

2008-03-06T21:12:00.001-08:00

aka Vampiros Sexos

While the Cinema of Transgression movement had peaked in the mid-1980s with the work of Richard Kern and Beth B., across the Atlantic, director Carl Andersen began making films clearly in the same vein in the late 1980s. His debut film, I Was a Teenage Zabbadoing... (full title: "I Was A Teenage Zabbadoing And The Incredible Lusty Dust-Whip From Outer Space Conquers The Earth Versus The 3 Psychedelic Stooges Of Dr. Fun Helsing And Fighting Against Surf-Vampires And Sex-Nazis And Have Troubles With This Endless Titillation Title") is clearly situated within this movement, combining Vampire archetypes with hardcore sex all set to a soundtrack of post-punk and no-wave music.

In this hour long, starkly lit black and wide feature, plot takes a sidestep to the depiction of angsty counterculture, fights, obsessive sex, and lusty vampires. What little plot is found follows, apparently, "A female vampire from the planet Arus [who] tries to vampirize the descendants of Dr. Fun Helsing."¹ The vampire infects her first victim by way of "infected" olive oil (?!), and then the vampire virus spreads itself via sex and biting. This all takes place among 20 something kids clad in black and leather, who hang out at a bar (The Video Teque) and don't really do too much with their lives other than fuck.

For being what could be considered an ostensibly empty plot, the film moves at a rapidly entertaining pace, with occasional bouts of humor (as two characters are driving along the street on their hunt for the vampires, they keep passing couples fighting for no apparent reason). Parts of the film also are tailor made to fit the excellent music that's decorating the scenery, but the film plays these "music video" scenes in a way similar to the aforementioned Cinema of Transgression, never delving into something that seems out of place (in the way quite a few contemporary straight to video horror flicks do).

It's remarkably trashy but stylish; a perfect visual accompaniment to the no-wave music scene that prevailed in America (and to some extent, Europe)--far more fitting, in my opinion, than many of the films of Nick Zedd (who authored the Cinema of Transgression Manifesto).

There are, however, two particularly interesting elements of the film that merit mention. The first is a particularly potent twenty second scene where two of the main vampires get into a brief fight as one of their soon to be victims plays an acoustic song with lyrics about dancing in the background. It's bizarrely poetic in a very low-rent sort of way that totally fits the tone of the film. The second interesting element comes by way of what the vampires are weak against: instead of garlic and crucifix's, the vampires cannot cross the border of--wait for it-- Tarkovsky films! It's a bizarre jab that once again fits the punk spirit that pervades the rest of the film.

My main point of interest to the films of Carl Andersen, aside from the fact that they're delightfully entertaining and earnest in a way that most cinema has forgotten about, comes from the fact that ever since seeing Andersen's most notorious film, 1990's Mondo Weirdo, I've been a bit obsessed with the band that does the soundtracks for what appears to be his entire oeuvre, Model D'oo. There's a track that I absolutely love from Mondo Weirdo that also appears in this film, albeit in a stripped down version. Regardless, liking the music of the soundtrack significantly helps to enjoy the film.

¹The intertitles of the film are in German (I think), so the "details" provided in this sentence come via the Vampyres-Online website.

March Update: Another Entry Without Pictures

2008-03-06T20:22:00.001-08:00

Once again I'm sitting in front of my computer posting yet another update about how it's been "a bit quiet" around here lately. I could blame this on the fact that I've been busy with schoolwork (which is ostensibly a truth), but in reality I've hardly watched any movies that would qualify as something that I'd want to write about for a while. The reason? It's a bit embarrassing, but I got sucked into prime-time TV show Lost.

I should clarify that while I obviously own a TV and make use of it regularly to watch flicks, we don't have cable at my house, and I don't even have an antenna on my TV so I get literally zero channels; hence, it's not a fallacy when I proclaim that "I don't have TV." This is for a number of reasons, the main being that it's very rare that I watch TV, so it would be utterly superfluous to pay for cable, despite the fact that a few of my roommates wouldn't mind being able to tune in and tune out ever so often.

But, I do occasionally "watch TV" via DVD rentals, streaming episodes, and online downloads. For some reason, at the beginning of February, something convinced me to start watching Lost. And then, since February 9th, I've watched the entire first three seasons, plus the five episodes of season four that have aired so far. This amounts to 76 45 minute episodes. That's about 3420 minutes. Which, presupposing that a majority of the movies I watch are around 90 minutes, comes out to be 38 movies. Which, in retrospect, is fairly depressing.

It's not a bad show, it's fairly entertaining, and, all things considered, it's relatively smart. But, while reading Raoul Ruiz's Poetics of Cinema this last week I encountered an explanation for why I was finding it so hard to do anything but what a relatively empty show. In the first chapter of Poetics of Cinema, Ruiz discusses Central Conflict Theory, and, in a round about way, his aversion to it. Central Conflict Theory ostensibly posits an A vs. B position, and generally manipulates the audience into siding with one side over the other. This central conflict is the only thing driving not only the show, but the audience's desire to see the show: the audience wants nothing more than to see how conflicts resolve. Here's what Ruiz says in his own words:

Let us return to films that are not boring. Films provoked by the noonday demon. Central conflict theory manufactures athletic fiction and offers to take us on a journey. Prisoner of the protagonist's will, we are subjected to the various stages making up a conflict of which he, the protagonist, is at once guardian and captive. In the end we are released and given back to ourselves, a little sadder than before. There is only one notion in our heads, which is to go [on] another journey as soon as we can.

(It's worth noting that Ruiz is using "films that are no boring" a bit ironically; he has a preference for what, viewed with the core idea of Central Conflict Theory, are boring; he quotes Ozu, Snow, et. al. as examples of "boring" film.)

This awareness frustrates me but is also fairly enlightening; and these emotions arise from the fact that it's an utterly accurate observation. I was never reflecting on events from the show (which has quite a vaguely interesting mythology built up around it to be honest), I was just voracious ready to devour solutions to my athlete's problems. It also made me more aware of the fact that most of the films I tend to prefer and applaud are (mostly) lacking Central Conflict, or at least feature a decentralized plot.

The perks of watching a Robbe-Grillet film are not cause and effect; it's not really important who you side with or even what happens to the characters--rather, it's the context that the plot is playing out in and the ideas that are coming forth via the character-signifiers. Etc., etc., I could probably elaborate with a long list of my favorite films and directors, but I wouldn't have any more work done that I did to begin with.

However, as I said, I'm now completely caught up. Despite my still naive desire/necessity to see whether team A or team B wins, there are no more episodes for me to satiate the empty hunger with, at least until next week. But, that means I can finally get things done!

As of tonight I am officially on my Spring Break, and I've already begun working on content for the Esotika website. I have a new review that will be up later tonight once I resize the screencaps, I've begun working on the Library section of the website (which is actually a much smaller undertaking than I anticipated), I have 80% of my "Best DVDs of 2007" list written, and I will be helping my friend/translator do the final edit on the Mario Mercier article on Wednesday. So, it's update time!

I've also finally gotten around to updating my monthly screening log (linked from the right panel), adding December, January, and February.

Also, I'd like to thank Jeremy from over at Moon in the Gutter for pointing out the
Wikio Top Film Blogs list which I was delighted to find my own humble blog at #37. I'm not sure how it works, but I just wanted to take the opportunity to once again thank all the readers of this blog!

JEANNE'S JOURNAL (MARIO MERCIER)

2008-02-25T00:41:00.000-08:00

"My dear Éric,

Among the books that you have recently sent me, I thank you most particularly for the work of Mario Mercier. I don’t know who this author is, but his invention, in the fascinating world of the fantastique that is so dear to us, is a prodigious wealth. Pushed so far, with such a disposition towards unrealism, insanity becomes a simple value [...] Without waiting for Mario Mercier to become nationally recognized [...], I would like you to know that I admire him. "
-A letter to Eric Losfield from Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues¹

Tonight, lying on my bed in the hours after I returned from my banal part-time job in retail, I finished reading Mario Mercier's incomparable novel, Jeanne's Journal. To my knowledge (any digging reveals no further details), it is the only novel of Mercier's that has ever been translated into English, and at that the book is long out of print and often fetches prices of at least 100 USD on used book sites. I lucked out and managed to track a copy down through my university's interlibrary loan system, and I'm very grateful that I was able to.

The book is one of the most fanciful forays into the erotic realm of the fantastique that I've ever encountered--in any medium. At time the book reads like a bizarre sci-fi novel tainted with an optimistic idealism that was prominent during the mid-20th centuries; other times it hearkens Sadean excess, staying strongly full force until the readers imagination is so permeated with impossible excess that the reality of the physical space the reader undoubtedly exists in simply disappears.

The story exists solely within the realm of spectacle, nothing is too fanciful or far-fetched to escape Mercier's transcendent realm; erotically charged throughout, it's a world where dream and reality are equally leveled, neither is easier to swallow. The book tells the tale of the titular Jeanne, who eventually ends up on a quest to rescue her friend Louise from the grips of an evil Baron; Louise being held hostage due to the fact that she humiliated the Baron's wife at a party.

Among the many highlights of the book, I was particularly awed by Mercier's description of the Baron's metaphysical kingdom, which brought to my mind an amalgamation of Verner Panton colors and luminance, viscous fluids floating in the air via a Jordan Belson film, human debasement recalling and overwhelming everything from Andre Pieyre de Mandiargue's Portrait of an Englishman in His Chateau to Bernard Noel's Castle of Communion, all culminating in pseudo-scientific explanation that, bizarrely, have more in common with the magical elevator in Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory than anything formerly mentioned. An excerpt will help my point:

"We entered a large, circular room containing many pipes of various diameters and running in different directions. A ventilation whir came from a series of small grilles opening in the floor. I looked up and, to my surprise, I saw a number of vividly coloured condensations silhouetting the shape of pieces of furniture.

"Let's go up," the Baron said.

"But there are no stairs," I could not help pointing out.

He began to laugh and, pulling on my leash, proceeded up an imaginary staircase. With amazement, I felt myself rise into the air.

I then realised that this stair case, as well as the floor, was made of concentrated layers of stabilised air, spatially maintained by invisible field forces[...]"²

And from that point on, the spectacle continues, unabated, until the book ends on a remarkably sublime note that perfectly encapsulates the tone and fantasticism of the rest of the book, while allowing a cathartic sense of conclusion, and utter satisfaction.

I can't recommend the enough book, and hope that sometime in the future I am either fluent enough in French myself to read the rest of Mercier's oeuvre, or more of his work becomes available in English. Though I'm assuming I will have to rely on the former.

The book itself encountered trouble with the censors upon it's initial publication in 1969, but Eric Losfields staunch defense of the book meant that eventually it found publication for an unsuspecting public. Mercier went on to write several more books (La cuvée de singes, Le Necrophile) and eventually he directed two feature films.

Though still mostly unknown, Pete Tombs brought some slight attention to the man with his and Cathal Tohill's quintessential Immoral Tales, which had a dedicated review of Mercier's first feature film, La Goulve (which is frequently bootlegged with the English title Erotic Witchcraft). Mercier's second film, La Papesse, has fortunately been released on a rather lackluster DVD by Pathfinder entertainment. Unfortunately the subtitles on the DVD barely match any of the dialogue on screen, so the viewing experience is compromised.

With now having experienced one of Mercier's novel in addition to one of his films, I can firmly declare that the man is remarkably interesting, and I will continue to hope for the opportunity to experience more of his work in the future.

¹ Unless noted, all quotes and background information comes from an article on Mario Mercier written by Frederick Durand. A full translation of the article (which Frederick assures me has the most info on Mercier in any language) is forthcoming on the Esotika site, once the wonderful Mandy Hoff finishes the translation and I work with her to clean it up.

² English translation by Arlette Ryvers, 1972

Alain Robbe-Grillet: August 1922 - February 2008

2008-02-18T12:54:00.000-08:00

Despite the turmoil of events that have occurred around me recently (as I've mentioned before, I attend Northern Illinois University which was recently the site of a school shooting on Valentines day) I find myself most affected (in a totally selfish way) by the death of filmmaker and author (among other things), Alain Robbe-Grillet.

I discovered Alain Robbe-Grillet on a whim after seeing Last Year at Marienbad six or seven years ago. After watching more Alain Resnais films I came to the realization that it wasn't Resnais' work that had hit me so hard about the film, but rather Robbe-Grillet's script. This eventually led to me seeking out his novels and films, which I devoured and loved.

I have a lot to say about the man, as his films and books have been a constant source of both awe and inspiration over the years, but I just wanted to drop a quick note expressing my, well, sadness (though that word doesn't contextually seem to be the best fit) over his death. He had recently completely a novel (A Sentimental Novel) that had been a source of controversy in France, and hasn't seen an English translation yet (which is no suprise, considering there are still large chunks of his oeuvre that have yet to see the light of day in English accessible options; namely, most of his filmography as director, 2/3s of his "autobiographical" written trilogy, his collaboration with Irina Ionesco [the text of which was admittedly worked into some of his intertextual novels], and more), but I look forward to reading it whenever I get the opportunity.

His work has forced me to think about narrative in a way that I undoubtedly would have taken a longer time to come across; and his visual-textual collaborations have been particularly pertinent to the development of my own work.

Though I suppose it sounds trite to say, maybe every cloud does have a silver lining, and the death of a great artist will bring enough attention that hopefully more of his work (his films especially) will become available for a larger audience so more people can understand what it is that I personally find so utterly amazing.

UPDATE

2008-01-22T22:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, so obviously even with launching the website I've been pretty quiet over here. I just wanted to comment to say that I'm not abandoning this blog in favor of the website. I think (I haven't decided 100% yet) that what I'll be doing is still be posting my reviews as I write them here, and then I'll do weekly updates on the website.

But, aside from just films reviews as normal, I think I'll be expanding what I blog about on here- the Esotika website will be dedicated exclusively to film, but I will probably expand the blog to discussion of books, music, and art as well. All new articles will go exclusively to the website, as will content from contributors (reviews, articles, and etc.), so make sure you check that regularly as well.

Just wanted to pop in and say "Hi!" again-- didn't want to appear MIA!

VENUS IN FURS (JESS FRANCO, 1969)

2008-01-22T22:20:00.000-08:00

The first time I saw Venus in Furs was four years ago; Blue Underground's stunning DVD presentation had yet to be released, and with only six Franco films under belt, I was still a Franco novice. I had been working through the few films of his that I could find, and before Venus in Furs the only one that had stood out to be was Virgin Among the Living Dead-- but Venus in Furs was different. Venus in Furs was the first Franco film that I got truly excited about. After my first viewing on a crummy VHS dub I immediately rewound the ending credits and watched Barbara McNair's wailing voice called out: "Venus in furs will be smiiiiiling-- when that moment arrives..."

Watching the film (for the fourth time) now is a totally different experience. The film has changed-- well, perhaps the film hasn't change, but the way I watch Franco films have. In fact, my entire method of watching films has changed. If there's anything that writing about film has taught me, it's the importance of being an active film viewer. And often with a Franco flick, being an active film viewer requires you to look at the film in context- specifically the context of the Franco canon.

But I'll touch on that later, as I'm also a staunch supporter of the idea that a piece of art, if it can be labeled "objectively good," should be able to stand on it's own--and Venus in Furs certainly does. Franco has--throughout his many taped interviews that delightfully complement DVD releases of his films--shown him self to be a jazz fanatic; the music inspires everything he does. In the case of Venus in Furs this inspiration is obvious--the story follows trumpet player Jimmy Logan (James Darren- whose character [and most of the plot of the film itself] was based off of musician Chet Baker) as he falls in love with Wanda Reed (Maria Rohm), a woman who he saw killed over a year ago. Jimmy is also in love with Rita (Barbara McNair), a crooning in the nightclub he plays trumpet in. Uptempo and almost psychedelic, courtesy of Manfred Mann decorates the film; there is more music on display here than dialogue, something that works to Franco's advantage.

Opening on a sunlit beach (featuring a fence that shares more than a passing resemblance to the infamous fence that populates a majority of the films in director Jean Rollin's oeuvre), the viewer is immediately introduced to a theme that pops up again and again in the "Franco canon"-- the idea of the sea, of water, as the beginning and the end. This is a motif that pops up, as I've said, in many of Franco's films: at the end of Female Vampire, as Countess Irina drowns in her bathtub, Sexual Story of O where Mario carries the murdered Odile into the eternally looming sea, in Vampyros Lesbos with Countess Nadine drowned face up in her swimming pool, Antonio at the end of Gemidos de Placer, the list is unending! And it was at this point, upon my fourth viewing of Venus in Furs, that I realized why it worked so well.

I think it works so well--and holds the highest priority among casual Franco fans-- because of the fact that it is both a microcosm of the Franco universe and an excellent example of European Genre Cinema (Euro-Cult, Eurotrash, whatever term you prefer). And there's a reason for this- the productions that Jess Franco made with Harry Alan Towers were international coproductions; and because of this, there were a lot of cinematic elements that Franco lost control over. But, Harry Alan Towers wasn't incompetent, so the combination between the two was fairly strong, and while they may not be "pure Franco" films, they are certainly good films.*

"Time is like the ocean-- you can't hold on to it..." musing Jimmy as he tries to take reign over the events in his life- the total chaos that is causing him such emotional distress. And this distortion of time is hyper-present in the film, in an early scene, introducing the murder of Wanda at the hands of three perverts, a party is filled to the brim with people, but nobody within the frame moves except our pivotal characters, the extras decorating the lavish room frozen still, echoing scenes from Alain Resnais' brilliantly elliptical Last Year At Marienbad-- except in a completely different context. Scenes cut back and forth between the past and the present, even occasionally jumping into what we can only assume is the future. Nothing is making sense to Jimmy as he wanders through the carnival in Rio, and the narrative structure of the film serves to hide the truth (at least, whatever truth there is to be told in a work of fiction) from the audience. We never know more than Jimmy.

The exploration of time and memory, played out via an occasionally melodramatic love story, calls to mind a quote from Jacques Derrida in Ken McMullen's 1983 film Ghost Dance:

"Ghosts don’t just appear, they come back. In French we talk of them ‘returning.’Now that presupposes a memory of the past, that has never taken the form of the present. [The] theory of ghosts is based on a theory of mourning. In normal mourning, Freud says, one internalizes the dead, one takes the dead into oneself, and assimilates them. This internalization is an idealization, it accepts the dead. Whereas in mourning, which doesn’t develop naturally–-that is to say, in mourning, that goes wrong–-there is no true internalization. There is [...] ‘incorporation,’ the dead are taken into us but don’t become a part of us. They just occupy a particular place in our bodies. They can speak for themselves. They can haunt our body and ventriloquise our speech, so the ghost is enclosed in a crypt, which is our body. We become a sort of graveyard for ghosts. A ghost can be not only our unconscious, but more precisely, someone else’s unconscious. The other’s unconscious speaks in our place. It is not our unconscious, it is the unconscious of the other which plays tricks on us. It can be terrifying, but that’s when things start to happen."

And things do indeed happen for Jimmy as he's haunted by the memory of the dead Wanda- a memory so strong with love and lust that he manages to somehow manifest her, and she becomes the catalyst for the events in the film. There is, of course, a delightfully handled revenge subplot that plays out amidst the romantic haunting, but it's hardly relevant. What it does serve to do, however, is necessary to the success of the film. It is within this subplot that a strong portrayal of European Genre Cinema tropes comes to the surface, it is this subplot which balances out the "non -Franco" elements of the film, creating the dichotomy of the personal film (Franco's general method-- at least when he has full control) and the public film (the idea of the "exploitation" film). But it's not just a generic subplot to pad the runtime and sell to international markets, rather, this subplot remains an oneiric exploration of revenge, still fitting into the idea of memory, ghosts, and regret. Wanda comes back to kill those who killed her, and it is no surprise when she discovers that all three of her soon-to-be-victims are still in love with her memory.

To further elaborate on the idea of the film as a microcosm of the Franco universe, one need look no further than the casting. Primary roles in the film are played by Maria Rohm, Klaus Kinski, and Dennis Price, all actors who pop up again and again throughout the Franco filmography. Part of Franco's brilliant intertextuality involves not only the repeated use of his favorite actors (in the way that many directors; Fassbinder and Herzog for instance), but the repeated use of the same actors as the same (or similar) characters. This repeated use of the character/actor combination helps to point out that idea that to truly enjoy see on of Jess Franco's films, you need to see all of them. It is the intertextuality that highlights each and every film, poking and prodding them into a more coherent product.

But I digress-- as I mentioned before, this is one of the few films from Franco's filmography that doesn't hold a total reliance on context to be a great film. Aside from the literal content of the film, much of the greatness of the film comes from it's aesthetics; specifically it's visuals and it's soundtrack. As I've already mentioned, Franco uses Manfred Mann's music more than dialogue, his tight, trippy, psychedelic jazz stylings providing a route for the fractured narrative to follow-- this music is passion. And of course, what good would a European Genre Film be without striking visuals? It was 1969 and the peak of modern interiors are on display here, including a couple scenes shot inside Carlo Ponti's styled-up-to-the-minute house! Many of the party scenes wouldn't look particularly out of place in a Radley Metzger film, something rare for Franco seeing as his interiors are generally far more sparse.

There are a few bits of post-production that provide temporary "surrealistic" touches to the film in particularly pivotal moments of the film. In decided how potent these effects are, it's best to examine the film, once again, from both the personal and public points of view: If viewed strictly as a Franco film, these surrealistic events violate the fractured realism that seems to be driving the narrative (as Franco himself points out in an interview), however, viewing the film in the context of a "public" film (as an example of European Genre Cinema), it works fine, and is handled subtly even. The special effects are not heavy handed, serving only to highlight the intensity of the moments on display.

In conclusion, Venus in Furs remains a brilliant film, whether taken as a microcosmic view into the wild world of director Jess Franco or as a prime example of European Genre Cinema, exploding with creativity and style.

The Website is Up!

2008-01-12T16:08:00.001-08:00

So, I have to head off to work shortly so I will add more details to this later, but for now all that needs to be said is:

To explain my month-long almost-absence:

THE ESOTIKA WEBSITE IS UP!

LOST IN NEW YORK (JEAN ROLLIN, 1989)

2007-12-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

Jean Rollin was always after the idea of a personal cinema, but circumstance most often forced him into the confines of genre cinema. Luckily for Rollin, most genre tropes were congruent with his ideas about cinema, being utterly influence by le fantastique and the serial films of Louis Feuillade. He is primarily known as a director of "erotic vampire films," and it is under this title that a majority of his films continue to be sold as.

The problem with this route, and the problem with the requirements Rollin often had to meet for his producers, is that Jean Rollin films are really not just "erotic vampire films." They are tried and true examples of the "personal, poetic" cinema that is rarely encountered outside of the film poems of the avant-garde from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. After a series of failures in attempting to get new projects off the ground in the mid-80s, Rollin made one of his most personal films yet, and, as Pete Tombs and Cathal Tohill argue in Immoral Tales, "a final salute to his twenty five year struggle to find a place of his own inside the commercial film world."

The film came about when a producer asked Rollin to shoot some street scenes of New York for a film he was working on. Rollin agreed to go, and ended up shooting a small amount of footage with two actresses for a film of his own. The film it self is structured with these New York scenes at the core, within the frame of an elderly woman relating her tale of encountering a mysterious young girl as a child, the two of them escaping into the dream world of New York by way of a magical moon goddess statue and their love of each other.

The film is really remarkably sentimental, in a way that is both compulsively entertaining and remarkably honest. When the two girls first meet they end up in the rafters of an old barn, clutching the moon goddess and pouring over images in a book, their imaginations transporting themselves into the images. In a remarkable sequence, as the camera lingers over a vast array of images from the covers of old fantastique serial novels, the two girls throw themselves into both the images on screen, and, as the narrator tells us, into a veritable history of cinema itself, including everything from specific scenes in Citizen Kane to the empty unseen off screen areas of Rollin's own films. It's a remarkably intertextual and self-referential scene, the universe of the film exists both in the real world (signified by the declaration that these girls are finding themselves inside of FILMS), but also in the cinematic world (as they are actually in these filmic constructions); the reality of the two merge into one fantastic universe that is ripe for exploration.

Within the scenes shot in New York, Rollin reveals an utterly exploratory eye, the camera lingering up and down the tall city-scapes, the girls wandering through the classically adventurous locations of New York, skylines, China town, piers. This is yet another example of Rollin clashing the real world with the cinematic world into a single construct, the archetypal nature of Chinatown, with it's "lingering shadows of Fu Manchu" is nothing but a fictional construct, but the construct is forced into the literal location that the camera depicts.

The girls, the narration tells us, are playing a game of hide and seek in New York, spending their time searching for each other and encountering the spirits of the night, including a rather comatose vampire who one of the girls gladly opens her neckline to. Even the soundtrack helps to permeate the oneiric atmosphere, the heavy use of Casio keyboard voices both planting the film firmly in the late 80s while also perfectly emphasizing the sentimentality of the two girls.

The film is really built upon series of juxtapositions; Rollin's ever-beloved beach with the streets of New York, the cinematic world with the real world, timelessness and memory with a specific sense of time and longing, the young girls of the film's adventures and the two old women who reunite on the beach. It's a film that bears Jean Rollin's unmistakable mark, and it becomes clear, as he reveals himself through revisiting the themes that have come up again and again throughout his filmography, that this sentimentality that has always perked through the larger narratives of his career is really what's driving him. And his honesty is beautiful.

I have to wonder, however, how the film would be received by a viewer unfamiliar with the rest of Rollin's works. It's a point of discussion that I've had to encounter over the years as I become further and further engrossed into the filmographies of many of the directors that I hold dear to my heart (specifically Rollin, who we are discussing here, and Jess Franco, as well as many other directors that exemplify the Esotika "genre"). Like with the films of Jess Franco, a Rollin film becomes more and more accessible and understandable the more familiar you are with the director's entire body of work. Many of Rollin's themes that he addresses over and over again remain fairly obtuse and sometimes obscure without special attention paid, and the sentimentality is something that would undoubtedly seem remarkably out of place to a first time viewer.

It could possibly be argued that this reliance on context lessens the film, but to ignore the context of anything is a dangerous manner. I would argue that it is more responsible to view the films of both Jean Rollin and Jess Franco as part of a larger whole, their entire careers adding up to a single film experience that spans many decades. Of course, while it is obvious that the individual films become better within the context of the entire body of work, I still believe that films stand strong on their own; they are giddy, oneiric, personal films, and the resistance towards an easy, commercial reading makes the films far more worthwhile than a stereotypical piece of genre cinema.

A couple of notes:

1) I only have a VHS copy of Lost in New York, which is why there is only a single image in this post, and it's one I just snagged from the internet at that. I won't be able to pick up the Redemption DVD for a while, but if anybody would be so kind as to maybe take five or six screenshots for me to accompany the review I would really appreciate it.

2) Bob Monell was kind enough to send me a segment of Rollin's La Griffe d'Horus along with the film reviewed above. The segment is about five minutes long, and it has opening credits, but it ends abruptly after Harry Dickson shoots at the creature on the steps. Is the full 22 minute pilot circulating at all or are the five minutes that I've got the only thing that it's possible to track down?

SOMBRE (PHILIPPE GRANDRIEUX, 1998)

2007-12-12T23:52:00.000-08:00

I have a confession to make.

I am ridiculously more harsh in my reactions to contemporary cinema than I am towards the films of the past, specifically those of the 1960s and 1970s. It is admittedly a bias, and I try and try to fight against it, but it is very rare that a film shakes up that bias.

Part of me feels justified in my preconceived notions; if I can name a hundred amazing, close to perfect films off the top of my head that were made in the 60s and 70s, then people making films should at least be somewhat aware of the fact that film has done amazing things. Not only should filmmakers have awareness, but they should also recognize that they have had more or less 40 years to learn from and make progress over the films that I call my favorite.

There are, of course, exceptions, and these exceptions stick out like a sore thumb to me because it proves me that some filmmakers have learned from the past, and have made progression, while still keeping the ability to tell a great story. The most recent example of a film that I find exceptional, and incredibly progressive in terms of it's construction and execution, is David Lynch's Inland Empire. Philippe Grandrieux's Sombre might be another film that I can add to my list of great contemporary films, but I'm not quite sure yet.

It seems fitting that David Lynch came up in this article before Grandrieux himself did, as I think Grandrieux owes quite a bit to David Lynch. Luckiliy, it's not the Lynch-ian "weirdness" that everybody seems to assume is Lynch's raison-d'etre, rather, it's more of a kinship to Lynch's technicalities and often-overlooked aesthetics.

Grandrieux's film, which follows the exploits of a quiet serial killer and a woman who may or may not have fallen in love with him, is primarily a sensual film. The narrative is secondary, but never overlooked. I suppose a better clarification would be that the film is extraordinary due to it's sensuality (in the literal sense), rather than it's narrative, which is somewhat overdone but handled in a remarkably refreshing manner (the "from the eyes of a serial killer" subgenre is not something that I generally can stand behind).

The visuals of the film are overwhelmingly beautiful, and it is fairly apparent that Grandrieux has some familiarity with the avant-garde. He keeps most of the film balanced carefully in the dark, illuminating only the tiniest details within the frame that is more often than not engulfed by the unknown; the dark. And it is amazing how well he has balanced the film against the light; while an amateur cinematographer would undoubtedly lose most of the detail, and the resulting images would end up incomprehensible, Sabine Lancelin (who has also worked with such experimental/art-house crossover filmmakers such as Chantal Akerman and Raoul Ruiz) handles the job wonderfully, and every single frame looks impeccable, hiding far more than is revealed.

Many of the shots are often very uniquely framed, a decision that has occasionally been inaccurately regarded as "amateur," "pretentious," or "pseudo-artsy." Taken out of the context of the film, I could see how these adjectives could possibly be fitting, but within the context of the film, I can't see how one could arrive at them. The uniquely framed shots, above all else, heighten the tension established by the narrative, an erratic, cold-hearted confusion. It's simply a matter of form following content, and a wonderful use at that.

The film's editing is remarkably caustic, which from a visual perspective creates a sort of divide between what the viewer understands that they are seeing, and what the viewer can infer from what they are seeing. There is a particular rhythm that is often established and then harshly violated, lulling the viewer into a sense of calm and then subconsciously shattering any trusting relationship the eye has established.

The film's visuals often play specifically to a sense of touch as well, the camera lingering relentlessly on the hair of the prostitute victims, abstracted by a lack of a signifier, existing solely as a texture that is present in the frame. Nature is treated the same way as the camera shifts through varying depths of field from character to grass, to ocean, to something that is outside of both the viewer and the anti-hero, Jean.

There is an excess of the out-of-focus frame, and this too adds to the heightened sense of terror that Grandrieux seems to be going for. The film doesn't allow the viewer to get comfortable for more than 30 seconds at a time, as all of the sensory details that the film offer stimulate us away from the level of comfort that the cinema generally provides.

Of course, even when a film has a remarkable visual style, sound is always important, and thankfully (once again), Grandrieux is aware of this as well, and this is where another possible connection to Lynch arises, as sound design is something that viewers tend to pay attention to in a Lynch film. Grandrieux's sound design is similar, working to both echo and undermine the visual, playing into the same idea of tension and terror mentioned above. This is also the second film that I've seen make a remarkably good use of the Bauhaus song "Bela Lugosi's Dead"--the other being The Hunger which is conventionally pretty and oneiric, but not as successful as this film.

In this film the song comes at a pivotal scene in which Claire and Jean have left a club with two rather despicable and annoying men. During this scene Elina Lowensohn (who plays Claire) displays an incredible talent, alternating between pure terror at her situation ("I am in danger") and pure drunken ecstasy. All of the actors in the film play their roles perfectly, but it is Lowensohn who has the most demanding role, and she handles it admirably.

Of course, sensual films don't succeed solely on the merits of their application to sight, sound, and touch, rather, it is the use of these sensual stimulants in the creation of mood that makes the film stand out. Grandrieux is smart to understand the fact that if a worthwhile, heavy atmosphere has been established, it can carry a film, and extraneous plot or narration does nothing but disrupt the flow of the atmosphere. This is what I mean that the film's narrative is secondary; the plot is conveyed via sound, image, and montage. Dialog is kept to a minimum, and the film is obviously more about the mood it has created than the elliptical narrative that drives it.

The film ends with the suggestion that both Claire and Jean have found love, for the first time, in each other, and neither characters can handle the newfound feeling. Jean wanders off in the night, next seen killing yet another prostitute, and Claire is last seen blatantly lying to a woman who picked her up off the road about Jean being her husband, the two having kids. This ostensibly admirable emotional state, which many individuals spend their whole lives desperately groping for, has no place in the psyche of the two main characters.

Despite the film's successes, it's not perfect. It often draws far too close to being too open, in the sense that the atmosphere almost becomes lost and the experience of the film is lessened, but these flaws are generally redeemed within a scene or two and the tone is re-established.

A COMPARISON BETWEEN "THE DESTROYED ROOM" AND LA CHAMBRE

2007-11-26T23:59:00.000-08:00

THE DESTROYED ROOM (Jeff Wall, 1978)

LA CHAMBRE (Chantal Akerman, 1972)

Both Jeff Wall and Chantal Akerman began making their major works in the 1970s, Wall working with photography and Akerman working primarily with film. Wall was producing highly constructed original images at a time when photography was primarily a conceptual outlet; the major works of the time being re-photographed images exploiting Baudrillard’s idea of simulacra. Akerman was highly influenced by American experimental filmmakers like Michael Snow and Andy Warhol, exposed to many examples of the materialist (or as Sitney would put it, structuralist) films being produced at the time. Both artists were well aware of the ideas behind the art being made at the time, but went about exploring these ideas in a manner opposed to the norm. Many of Wall’s photographs are often described as “cinematic;” they are completely fabricated and often seem to imply a larger narrative (which is of course dichotomically opposed to the completely anti-narrative re-photographic work). Akerman was also often using narrative to exploit concepts and techniques pioneered in the experimental work of the time. However, in the case of Wall’s “The Destroyed Room” and Akerman’s La Chambre, narrativity is used to do something other than tell a story. Both artworks establish a visual representation of a physical space; a bedroom apartment. The reason that Akerman’s film and Wall’s photograph work the way they do is due to the fact that both pieces establish and then deny the spaces they present as a performative space.

From the point of view of narrative, Wall’s constructed space clearly implies the result of a dramatic action. From some event that has transpired, a bedroom has been trashed, destroyed. But Wall’s photograph denies anything but the direct result of this narrative; there is nothing that signifies why or how the event transpired. It is arguable that the result of an action is enough to inspire a possible narrative, but Wall’s refusal to contextualize the room within a larger space (as explored in more detail below) means that the viewer cannot do this. The isolation of the room means that there is nothing from outside affecting the action, which takes away any presumed possibility of narrative. Akerman’s film works in a similar way, existing as what is essentially a ten minute establishing shot, revealing all aspects of the bedroom but having absolutely nothing occur within it. Akerman’s film even takes what is presented a step further, by placing a human character (in this case, Akerman herself) inside of the space. But once again, any narrativity is denied due to the character that Akerman places in the space doing absolutely nothing. The character may as well be another chair or lamp or object that simply exists in the room. Spaces are presented, and as bedrooms they are undeniably spaces where action happens, but no action is present.

The first step the artists take to deny the performative space is to subvert the expectations of the medium each is using in terms of temporal relevance. At the time Wall produced his photograph, the art world’s idea of the photograph was remarkably different from that of the medium's history. At the time, the photograph was primarily a tool for documentation and a conduit for concepts. But photography also holds the inherent concept of being a tool to “freeze” time. Wall manages to take both of these ideas and subvert them: Wall is not documenting an art piece or an event, rather he is building a construct for no other reason than to photograph it; the constructed room is not the art work, the photographic transparency displayed in a commercial light box is--he is not documenting anything. Rooted in traditional painting, he is also not merely presenting a concept, he is depicting a space with the medium of the camera. He is also subverting the idea of “freezing” time by not allowing any temporal signifiers into the photograph–the image that the viewer looks at could also be presented on film stock at 24 frames per second and the image would be exactly the same. There is an absence of anything living, and within it’s artificial construction, there is a total absence of life–-time has disappeared from the world of the photograph. There is nothing present in the frame that could indicate any sort of progression; the sun will not set because the light in the image is artificial, there are no people present in the frame to progress from point A to point B, and there is nothing organic that can decay. The image isn’t necessarily frozen, it never existed as a temporal space in the first place. Akerman’s subversion of the expectation of the medium also holds a reliance on time: film itself is a time-based medium; the primary reason one would create an image with motion-picture film over another medium is due to the fact that the medium allows a progression of time: painting, photography, and drawing all can present only what is essentially a single frame of motion-picture film (from here on out referred to simply as “film” for convenience). But there is ostensibly no progression in Akerman’s film. Rather, Akerman’s camera simply pans around the confines of a room: once again no temporal signifiers are present. Arguably there is a horizontal movement, but that is irrelevant to what Akerman is presenting. The camera examines the room in the way a viewer would look at any three dimensional artwork, circling the image to view all sides. There is no progression implicit in the artwork, rather the progression is only in the viewing of the art work. Akerman herself exists as the only character in the film, but she simply lies on her bed, staring blankly at the camera. She does nothing but pick up an apple and take a bite (which is arguably the only event in the film that contradicts the idea of no progression; but the element is so minute that it is largely inconsequential).

Both artists, in an attempt to deny the performative space, insist on denying a location of the “space” they are presenting in the context of an outside world. Wall’s photograph is an entirely fabricated space, and the image shows he has gone through great pains to reveal that. There is a remarkable signifier that reveals the space as a fabrication, there is no chance that the viewer can read the image as an actual room. This significantly present signifier is the bedroom’s doorway. Through the doorway the audience can see not only the wooden supports that allow the structure to stand, but also a clinical brick interior that dislocates the room from a placement in an apartment complex, hotel, house, or anywhere that a room would generally be located. The artificiality is also revealed by the lighting. While it would be possible for there to be two light sources invading a bedroom, natural light (the sun that would be permeating from the window) and artificial light (the light from the presumed “hallway” of the entrance) produce different color effects even in the most successfully color-balanced photograph. Akerman’s film also denies a relationship to the outside world in a more straight-forward manner: the doors of the apartment are closed, refusing to let anybody “outside” come in. Akerman disconnects from the outside world by overexposing the light coming in through her windows; masking any details of the outside world in a cloak of blinding white. She also presents the viewer with signifiers of artificiality; there is a breakfast that has been cooked and made, but the one character in the film refuses to interact with the breakfast. This lack of interaction elaborates the artificiality that is present. This refusal to create a larger context that the performative space exists in denies possibilities of narrativity; the rooms themselves are self-contained.

Note: I wrote this for an art history class that I'm currently in, and I'm not 100% sure that it fits the general Esotika criteria, but I haven't posted anything about film for a while and I'm tired of seeing my mug at the top of the page, so I thought, "Why not!"

ALLOW ME TO INTRODUCE MYSELF...

2007-11-22T22:28:00.000-08:00

Continuing with the not-directly-related-to-films posts...

With Kimberly's recent post over at the always wonderful Cinebeats, I've realized there's a certain satisfaction I get out of knowing what the author of whatever I'm reading looks like. It's certainly arbitrary and doesn't affect my reading in the least, but as I'm a visual person, photographic documentation helps me to posit whatever it is that I'm reading at least partially as a dialogue. I guess, more accurately, it helps me to posit the idea that there is a person behind the writing, even though, as Kimberly points out, I also like the writing to speak for itself.

And I also realized that I haven't revealed anything about myself in this blog outside of my blogger profile which simply states, "Photography student with an interest in film, literature, contemporary art, and "underground" culture." True, but also fairly vague. So allow me to indulge in myself for a bit and expand!

As the "About Me" says, I'm currently an undergraduate student in the process of getting my BFA in Photography at Northern Illinois University. I'm also currently minoring in English for the purposes of creative writing. I'm 21 years old and only have a few semesters left before I'll be applying to graduate schools; though for what, I'm not exactly sure yet.

I'd say my interest in film is pretty obvious (I mean, that is what this blog is all about!), but I'll just add that I've been more or less obsessed with films (starting out with American horror flicks) since I was about 13 years old and I got my own TV/VCR combo. I had loved movies before this, but getting a viewing location of my own allowed me to start developing a much more personal taste.

In regards to the all encompassing "literature" that I proclaim my interest in: Aside from film books--that I read religiously (which, I will undoubtedly be posting about my favorite film-related books in the future)-- I am also very into the nouveau roman and new narrative "movements," specifically the authors Alain Robbe-Grillet, Robert Pinget, Marguerite Duras, Camille Roy, Dennis Cooper, and Kathy Acker. Other favorite authors include Georges Bataille (of course!), Peter Sotos, Michel Houellebecq, Pauline Reage (yes yes, I know 'she' has been revealed as Dominique Aury/Anne Desclos, but I refuse to change my associations!), William Burroughs, and many, many more! (Okay, okay, I'll admit it; at least in terms of writing I'm a bit of a Francophile!)

It's also probably fairly apparent that I have an almost obsessive interest in art, with some of my favorite (non-film) artists including John Duncan, Gottfried Helnwein, Marina Abramovic, Hans Bellmer, Thomas Ruff, Félix González-Torres, bookartist Keith Smith, Rudolf Schwarzkogler, Gunter Brus, Robert Rauschenberg, Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Guy Bourdin, Robert Flynt, Yves Klein, Gregor Schneider, and Vito Acconci. Of course, this is another list that could be potentially endless, so I'll stop for the moment!

And now that I've endlessly listed my interest, I'll leave it at that. Hello! How are you?

A QUESTION AND A REQUEST

2007-11-17T22:29:00.001-08:00

A QUESTION:
My posting has been admittedly sparse as of late. I could explain why, but I doubt anybody cares all that much, as this is a blog about film, and not about me! Regardless, I've encountered something recently that warrants thought.

Part of the reason that I haven't posted much lately (here I go again...) is that I've been throwing myself into contemporary critical theory. I find it fascinating, and aside from inspiring a number of ideas for my many creative endeavors, it's becoming a lot easier for me to discuss concepts that before I had to spend paragraphs trying to explain. In fact, it's raised a sort of problem.

In terms of the reviews that I post here/will be posting when the website is launched (more about this below), one of my main goals is to translate the idea of no-brow culture into criticism. What I mean by this is that I want to talk about and discuss the films that I'm writing about in a manner that isn't obtuse and utterly academic, but I also don't want to ignore the "academic" elements in the films reviewed, as for me that is part of their major fun.

Of course, I should clarify the way I'm differentiating between academic and "academic." By academic (without quotes) I'm obviously implying writing on film written for the academic world, academic journals, etc. While a lot of this specific strand of writing is enlightening, most of it (in my mind, I may eventually re-evaluate my ideas about this) serves only to perpetuate ideas within the academic realm itself; almost intentionally refusing something that a non-academic would have any comprehension or interest in reading-- and this isn't meant to be condescending, oftentimes I myself find these essays and articles obtuse; there is a point where ideas can get lost or obscured by too much jargon and academic wankery (if you'll pardon the somewhat vulgar term).

By "academic" I mean to imply the elements of these films that are ostensibly more "intellectual" than a reductive cinema incorporates. Take, for example, the films of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Traditionally there have been two opposing ways to read his films (and very rarely do these readings overlap). The first way is to ignore the "intellectual" elements of the film and focus on the genre elements; vampirism, eroticism, le fantastique. The second method seems to ignore or pay little attention to the genre elements and their contextual implications, choosing rather to focus solely on ideas of critical theory; narratology, structuralist construction, montage. Alain Robbe-Grillet is probably the most blatant example of this cross-pollination of readings, but obviously there are many other films and directors that fall into this divide.

My goal, which has hopefully become clear, is to read the films from BOTH perspectives, allowing the "low-brow" and "high-brow" readings to play off each other in order to create a much stronger way to think about the film. The reason for this introduction is that by engrossing myself within critical theory recently, I've encountered a lot of terms that specifically refer to a specific concept/idea, and this word/signifier serves to short-cut the paragraph long explanation that would normally otherwise follow.

So the question that I've come up with is this: would a more regular use of a critical theory lexicon alienate readers? Or is it condescending to directly avoid certain terms especially for this reason? If I start using this specific language, and I ignoring my original ideas of establishing a no-brow criticism?

The conclusion I've come to is that if the articles don't go overboard with a reliance on academic language, there's not a problem. Ideally the context of the term/word would reveal at least something it implies, and if it's something that's really unfamiliar, the internet allows virtually instant access to a plethora of knowledge. I'm not totally sure though. I mean, obviously the point of establishing this no-brow criteria is a desire to appeal to as large an audience as possible, to get people from ALL areas of film-love to start thinking about these often neglected films.

So what do you think? I'd really like to hear. If this is a stupid question that I've spent far too much time thinking about, also tell me that.

A REQUEST
As I mentioned above, I am planning to launch the ESOTIKA website on January 1st, 2008. While it would be interesting, to say the least, if I ended up writing absolutely everything for the site itself, I feel I'd be limiting that information that could be there. The site would become more about MY opinions on film, and less about the FILMS themselves. This is not what I want.

I believe that there is a large community of individuals who love this specific, indescribable sort of film that I am personally obsessed with. I've never been able to come up with a term for it, but hopefully the idea is clear through the selection of films that I've written about throughout the 11 months I've been keeping this film blog. The point is, of course, I want ESOTIKA EROTICA PSYCHOTICA, as a website, as opposed to as a blog, to become a COMMUNITY and an extensive source of information. Most of the films I obsess over I've found very little about in the ways of information (most of the time, not always) either in books, or on the internet, or at least in English.

What I'm driving at here is that I'd love to have some help. The point is, if you feel passionate about the sort of films that I've obsessed over in this blog, to the point where you want to share this passion with readers all over the world, I would love your assistance.

I'd like to get a bit more content generated to debut with the website in the beginning of January, which is why I'm putting out this "call for entries" now-- it gives potential authors about a month to pull something together. So if you'd be interested in helping out either in writing, providing promotional images (poster scans/ press books / etc), please email me at

mikekitchell(at)gmail(dot)com

Also, if there is anybody who is bilingual and wants to help out by means of translation that would also be much appreciated! There are many great articles on the internet and in books that are in French, German, Italian, Japanese, etc. that could gain a much larger audience, and I've found that in many cases original authors are more than willing to have their writing exposed to a larger audience. So if
you'd like to help out in any way, please let me know!

Addendum:
Just to clarify--since Tim brought it up in the comments--I got permission from the author to translate the only article that is currently in the process of translation, and I wasn't intending on publishing any translations where I didn't have permission. Just wanted to clear that up!

DIRTY MARIA (TAKAHISA ZEZE, 1998)

2007-10-26T00:13:00.000-07:00

The pink film "genre" from Japan is endlessly fascinating to me. It seems like the entire genre has been entirely ignored in the west, excepting occasions where genre fans view the film for the titillating aspects. Which can't be faulted, as even in their native Japan, the target audience for the pink film is almost the equivalent as the target audience of pornographic videos here in America; they are sold as sex films, and generally accepted as sex films. What is so fascinating to me is that in virtually all of the better examples of the form that I've had the opportunity to see, the films transcend being simple sex films, in a really potent way.

The genre shares many characteristics with films like Through the Looking Glass and the hardcore films of Roger Watkins; namely a sense of disillusionment, existentialism, and loss of individuality. One will notice that these descriptors can also often be applied to canonical art house films like those of Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, and to some extent, the films of the French New Wave. So why is it that these films are so easily dismissed?

The easy answer, of course, is that they're primarily sex films. They're low-budget, generally barely achieving feature length (with run times almost always ranging between 55 and 75 minutes long), and marked as a primary example of Japan's "otherness." Aside from the intellectual conceits, which are virtually unmentioned by most, the films are notorious for their depictions of S/M situations, women in dominant positions being abused, and a fetishistic attention to female nipples. In the same way critics cannot generally see past the large breasts present in Meyers films, ignoring his remarkably progressive sense of editing, the emotional impact, political commentary, and thought-provoking ideas set forth in pink films are almost always ignored.

Of course, as I've already mentioned, it's these marginalized attributes that makes the genre so potent to me. I'll be the first to admit that not every film from the genre stands up to my preferred standards; many do exist simply as poorly-made smut. But in an industry that cranks out hundred of films every year, one can't expect each and every one to be perfect. It'd be an absurd concept.

In the context of the films that work the best, the "otherness" present in the depictions of sex doesn't seem so off-putting. Often the violent or sadomasochistic sex works as a perfect extension of characterization and emotional states that are being played out on film; generally dramatic events are remarkably intense, and what is generally considered to be "normal" sex would be out of place. "Normal" sex wouldn't punctuate any of the films' action, intellect, or emotion; like any smutty late night cable movie in America, it would be sex for the sake of sex.

Takahisa Zeze is a director who is unofficially considered part of the shitenno, or Four Heavenly Kings. To quote Roland Domenig from his particularly perceptive article Vital Flesh: The Mysterious World of Pink Eiga, the films of the Four Heavenly Kings were notoriously "'difficult' - they had too little sex, and gloomy, complicated plots." Compared to the banal, generic examples of the genre, this is certainly a true statement. But that is why the films from the shitenno are remarkable works of cinema.

Zeze's 1998 film Dirty Maria is a wonderful example of the type of cinema that the Four Heavenly Kings are notorious for. It's difficult, emotionally charged, existential, very gloomy, and enigmatic. It's also an incredibly beautiful film, taking full advantage of the snow-covered, isolated spa that the second half of the film primarily takes place at.

The film begins by introducing us to the titular Maria (who; coincidentally, is never actually named throughout the film [if I'm wrong here, please correct me]-- so I'm relying on the title for this significant information), who works as a secretary and sort of maid (for want of a better word) at a beauty salon. She is mostly quiet and keeps to herself, going home at night to her naively happy husband and small child. We are then introduced to Murakami, a taxi-driver who appears to be utterly dejected. We later find out that he is looking for his wife, Mayumi.

Maria has killed Mayumi. Whether out of jealousy, or something bigger, she kills Mayumi and cuts up her body, distributing the body parts in opaque black plastic bags to different dumpsters throughout the city she lives in. When Murakami comes to the beauty salon in a desperate attempt to find Mayumi, Maria informs Murakami that Mayumi had mentioned wanting to go back to a spa that she had visited on a company trip. Soon Maria and Murakami are in a car together driving across the icy expanse of abandoned roads, on their way to the nearly abandoned spa, that Maria herself also has a peculiar liking for.

Once the characters are subtly established, the remainder of the film explores the relationship that Murakami and Maria develop as their own personal secrets are revealed to each other and they find themselves linked in a very personal way. There is no love or happiness in the relationship that our protagonists develop, but rather there is a sense of desperation and necessity.

As previously mentioned, the film is gorgeous. Epically framed, snow covered mountains stand in the background of frames while Maria and Murakami, both wearing striking red clothing, stand against the shockingly white snow, the contrast between the bodies and their surroundings forcing the viewer to associate these two disparate individuals as compulsorily linked. The visuals in the film also create an inexorable calm-- there is never any superfluous movement in the frame, only the stoic environment and shockingly apathetic characters.

But what is most rewarding and enigmatic about the film is Zeze's visual and narrative detachment. The motives of both Maria and Murakami are completely obscured to us as viewers. At no point in the film are we allowed into the psychological state that had set forth the characters actions that have been playing out throughout the film. We occasionally get hints, such as when Maria remarks, in regards to killing Mayumi, ""It was surprisingly easy to kill her... because we die so easily." We also get hints into Murakami's utter frustration when he pulls down Mayumi's underwear from a clothesline outside and scatters it across the small bedroom floor. The camera remains still for most of the film, excepting, of course, occasional tracking shots that are strikingly noticeable when they follow all the calm.

In fact, much of the cinematography wouldn't be out of place in a Michael Haneke film; events beginning in the frame of the camera, then moving out of the frame while the camera stays still. There is also something genius about the hyper-literal use of an "icy" environment to help emphasis the "icy" detachment present in our protagonist's lives. The film is also almost completely devoid of dialogue; I would estimate that out of the 75 minutes that make up the films runtime, only 10 to 13 involve any dialogue.

As viewers we are never met with a sense of closure to the events that we have been introduced to. Instead, we are bombarded with atmosphere and implications; we're expected to feel instead of to discover. Aside from the detachment that's present throughout the film, Zeze throws in abjectly odd, subtle events that heighten the atmosphere present. For example, in an early scene with Murakami driving his taxi, a customer gets in and begins asking Murakami if he's "ever done S&M," because he has just gone to a telephone club with somebody's wife. In the middle of the man's story, Murakami asks the man to get out of the car, as he's had enough of his job for the day. Aside from revealing Murakami's utter frustration with his disloyal wife, it also sets up the idea of giving up that permeates the ideas in the film. Another particularly pertinent example comes when Maria is having sex with her co-worker Sawai. As he pulls off his underwear and reaches for a condom from his jeans, she stops him, remarking, "we don't need that this time." There is an utter sense of futility in what she says, revealing that she too has already given up, she's no longer concerned with most of the world.

All in all the film is an intensely atmosphere window into characters who are emotionally empty, yet hanging on to any threads of feeling that they can grasp, going through life in a desolate trance, trying to connect in whatever way they can.

LIVING (FRANS ZWARTJES, 1971)

2007-10-18T21:00:00.000-07:00

Frans Zwartjes is a very peculiar, extraordinary filmmaker. His film all seem to exist completely disconnected from the real world. While one can assume this is at least partially due to the fact that he almost exclusively shoots interiors, the few times that his camera deviates into the outside world his unique lens still shows the world in utter disconnect. I spent a weekend watching 14 of his films (thirteen shorts and one feature), and at the end I felt like I had experienced the uncanny. Often times while viewing a Zwartjes film one gets the feeling that they're not supposed to be watching the film, that their act of viewing is transcending simple voyeurism and actually attaining violation. And this is why Zwartjes is amazing.

Living was my introduction to Zwartjes, and to this day it remains not only my favorite Zwartjes film, but also one of the most powerful films that I've ever seen. The film introduces a simple concept: Frans and Trix, Frans' wife and muse, walk around the freshly-painted empty living room of the house they have just moved into. The two arrange miniature furniture on a floor plan, crawl on the floor, and aimlessly look around. This is the entirety of the action in the film.

What makes the film so powerful is the incredible atmosphere. There is a large series of windows on one wall of the room, but Zwartjes exposes the film so the panes are filled with nothing but a sublime white, totally removing the room from the outside world. For all the viewer knows, the house could be located in outer space. This detachment helps to enhance the idea of Trix and Frans in total isolation from the rest of the world. Zwartjes also shot the film with as wide of a wide-angle lens as he could get without having to shoot a fish eye lens, and this decision extends the atmosphere of isolation that has already been established by the empty room and detached pervasiveness.

But what brings the film together is the brilliant soundtrack. Discordant, errant organ permeates the viewers ears as the ghostly-pale faces of Trix and Frans wander around their space. The soundtrack is some of the most hauntingly beautiful music that I have ever heard in my entire life, and the affect that the score has on the images is utterly remarkable; a testament to that inherent aspect of cinema, the marriage of sound with images.

Along with the uncanny mood of isolation, Zwartjes also manages to implode a remarkable sexual tension. This tension briefly rears it's head via brilliant montage. The pace of the majority of the film is calm and studied, but several scenes explode into hyper-quick, very short, cuts of Trix' breasts and underwear as she lounges around the empty space. Zwartjes himself remains stoic in his hushed countenance, constantly biting down on a handkerchief as he continues to examine the space around him, occasionally stealing fetishized glances at his wife.

Gaston Bachelard, in his Poetics of Space, remarks that "[...] it [is] reasonable to say we 'read a house,' or 'read a room,' since both room and house are psychological diagrams that guide writers and poets in their analysis of intimacy." With Living, Zwartjes not only reads the room himself, but allows the viewer to do the same. Within the isolation, an obsessive relation between Frans and Trix is fully apparent. These rooms not only keep the outside world from spilling in, but also keeps lust and obsession from spilling out.

Aside from everything else, it's worth noting just how beautiful Zwartjes' aesthetics are. It's not something that's unique to this film particularly, but Living is one of the most amazing films to look at out of Zwartjes' films that I've been lucky enough to see. Zwartjes processes his own film, which allows him to push and pull his images: this lets him saturate his images in a singular way. The frame is permeated with blinding whites, grayish blue hues, the deepest greens, and occasionally, a shockingly intrusive red. The color palate itself adds to the overwhelming abject sense of the uncanny in the most beautiful way imaginable. Not only are the colors wonderful, but the camera work is an amazing feat in itself. All of the film is shot by Zwartjes himself, and Zwartjes himself is in the frame for most of the film. His shots are hand held, and he handles the camera in disorienting swooping motions so well; there's not a shake to be found.

It's no surprise, given the power of the film, that Zwartjes himself calls it his favorite. It's an unmatched examination of architecture and physical space representing a poetic emotional state, and it's a testament to a personalized sense of aesthetics.

INLAND EMPIRE (DAVID LYNCH, 2006)

2007-10-17T21:36:00.000-07:00

I have now seen Inland Empire twice. The first time was over half a year ago, in a very large theater in Chicago with Lynch himself in attendance. The second time was finished last night, after watching it segmented over the period of about a month (mainly due to my desire to watch it in a half-awake/half-asleep state as I was going to bed, which almost always lead to me falling asleep, obviously). Both experiences, in more ways than one, have been totally different experiences. And really, what I want to stress here, is that the film itself is an experience.

In discussion of Lynch's films one often, undoubtedly, encounters interpretations of narrative. It makes sense, as feature films are primarily narrative. Lynch has always bordered the line between commercial film and experimental film. Sometimes this works to a disadvantage, and sometimes it turns out quite nicely. One thing that I find somewhat problematic is the tendency that film viewers and Lynch fans have to try to "solve" the mysteries that Lynch puts forth. For one thing, I think that undermines the intention of many films from Lynch's career, but it primarily undermines what (it appears) that Lynch was setting out to do with Inland Empire.

In the 60s and 70s, many experimental and avant-garde film makers began to push towards the idea of an expanded cinema. I, of course, mean this different from how Youngblood who was a primary advocate of considering video and new media as an art form, means it. Stephen Dwoskin, in his seminal book Film Is offers the following: "In film expression one essential expanding device is to thrust outwards beyond the frame. This, at least, gives a literal meaning to the term 'expanding cinema', which is not an addition to cinema, but part of cinema." And later he goes on to say, "In the expanded cinema the images contained in the moving frames function less as expression and suggest associations and more as actual occurrences. What appears in the frame is important, but the way in which it happens is also essential."

Examples of this particular breed of expanded cinema would include films designed for multiple-screen projection (such as Warhol's Chelsea Girls and films of the Italian De Bernardi who often incorporated three- and four-screen projections), incorporation of live actions (like many of Terayama's more experimental works and many of the individuals working within Viennese 'direct art' such as Valie Export and Peter Weibel), etc. I would argue that Inland Empire shares more in common with these experiential works than it does with common narrative features.

For Lynch, above all else, is concerned with atmosphere; the environment and mood that he is creating with his moving images. The narrative in Inland Empire is largely coincidental to a feeling that Lynch is trying to create. The intention behind the choices made by expanded cinema filmmakers was to give cinema viewers a more tangible experience in terms of relatability, in order to draw the viewer deeper into the experience of the film itself. I would argue that Lynch achieves this desired outcome without the use of multiple projections or live actions, but rather by laying on atmosphere and disparate events so thickly that the viewer suffers a completely visceral and emotional response.

It may seem a bit of a stretch to relate multiple projections and performance art to a (materially) straight-forward film, but despite the different methods of work, both films strive for the same goal. Another way Inland Empire works is Lynch's subversion of the flicker. Obviously, since Lynch is working with digital video as opposed to actual film, he cannot actually make a flicker, in the traditional sense. But, many early flicker films (such as Tony Conrad's The Flicker, as well as much of Bruce Connor and Peter Kubelka's work) aspire to put the viewer into a trance state; occasionally this is used to some affect, but often the mere materialist aspect is exploited. Lynch, throughout the movie, will have a scene set in very low light, only to suddenly use a stroboscopic light along with heightened music to imply either an intense narrative change emphasis a catharsis; such as near the end of the movie when Laura Dern (in one of her many permutations) is wandering through a hallway that is possibly directly outside of the apartment that the "Rabbits" sitcom is taking place inside, where she eventually encounters a man with a terribly distorted face. Light flickers, music screams.

To reductively read the film would be to assume that all Lynch is after is emotional manipulation. However, emotional manipulation can't lead to an end unless it's within the context of a narrative. There are certainly threads of narrative throughout Lynch's film, as the narrative serves as a form of progression throughout the film, but unlike a traditional narrative (even in comparison to what you could tongue-in-cheek refer to as a traditional Lynchian narrative) events aren't linked, characters come in and out of presumed story-lines, and virtually nothing is brought to a close. There is only an underlying theme, and an underlying mood, which serve to create, ultimately, a masterful environment.

This creation of an environment is how Lynch avoids emotional manipulation for the sake of emotional manipulation. If you read the film as an experience instead of a narrative, you're not supposed to empathize with characters, rather, you become an absent character. The fourth wall is broken. Of course, in Lynch's meta-universe there seem to be more than four walls. There are films within films within films; meaning, of course, that the viewer has no context for what is ostensibly the reality of what they're watching. This is disorienting, and forces the viewer, instead of locating a reality within the film to locate the only reality present, being, of course, the actual physical world.

Lynch also calls attention to the act of viewing many, many times throughout the films. There is the woman in the hotel room who is occasionally seen watching events that we as viewers have been watching as *the movie* on her tv screen, *within the movie we're watching*. Also, in the last hour when Laura Dern is in the theater and layers of the film change as we go from viewing Laura Dern on the screen to Laura Dern viewing herself on a movie screen within the movie, to use viewing the screen Laura Dern is viewing straight on (which has a different texture than the rest of the video does), etc. The sense of disorientation is so strong, that you can't help but lose yourself to it.

A lot of the examples I've brought up previously have called much attention to the final third of the film. Many viewers are disappointed that after setting up a perfect (though for Lynch, "normal") narrative in the first third of the film, the interesting plot line totally dissolves. You could assume that if all Lynch wanted was to create this environment to be experienced, then the initial narrative could be left out. I disagree completely, as without the initial introduced narrative, we wouldn't experience disorientation. Lynch sets up expectations with the first hour, and then breaks them in remarkably unusual ways. If the film was devoid of the introductory narrative, it would simply exist as pure mood, which could be interesting, but in the format it currently exists in, Lynch has many more opportunities to expand this experience, which he makes ample use of.

Due to the nature of the film as an experience, I insist that the film is actually far more successful when viewed alone on a TV. When viewed as a projection in a movie theater, not only are you surrounded by other individuals which keep you in touch with an ordered reality, but also digital video actually looks better on a TV than it does projected. Being alone makes you far more susceptible to the environment that Lynch has created, and it becomes remarkably easier to experience the film. While seeing the film in theater I was often brought out of this environment when audience members would laugh at the absurdity present in the film. While in a group, the most common reaction to absurdity seems to be laughter because it makes you uncomfortable. Whereas, viewing the film on your own, the absurdity simply extends the totally incongruous atmosphere that has been created and becomes starkly chilling. Even the monologue by the Asian woman on the street near the end of the film, about her cousin Niko and her monkey becomes terrifying in context-- out of context, without being totally absorbed into the film, it's ridiculous and you can't help but laugh.

Lynch has always made subversive horror films. He's never been satisfied with normal genre tropes, yet it is his films that invoke terror in a far more urgent fashion than most of what can be said to come directly out of the horror genre itself. Before I saw Inland Empire, I considered Lost Highway to be Lynch's most successful film. Eraserhead is too underdeveloped and caught up in blatant symbolism, Blue Velvet doesn't alter any formal structure, and Mulholland Drive alters structure in too much of an intentional way (which may sound like an arbitrary statement, but I really think Mulholland Drive losing much of the "chance" present in Lost Highway that significantly affects the tone of the film). In terms of Lynch's narrative films, I still hold to that fact. But in terms of something new, something progressive, and something that exists as terror instead of a depiction of terror, Inland Empire succeeds. I think it's safe to assume that what Lynch has done with the film is something he's been building up to throughout his entire career, whether intentionally or not. It's no secret that none of the cast had any idea how the scenes they were shooting would fit together, and in interviews even Lynch himself has admitted to writing scenes on the fly, not having any idea how the film would end up. Within his freedom it becomes clear to a viewer that this terror, this atmosphere is what Lynch is most concerned with, and he is a master of it.

His sound design, as par for the course of his filmography, is excellent. There is no doubt that a Lynch film without Lynch's sound design would be completely ineffective. Sound has as much of a presence, if not more, than the images on the screen. Such an intensive reliance on sound in a film only serves to heighten the sensory relation to its viewer. I'm sure if there were someway to embed an olfactory experience into the film, Lynch would be exploiting that as well.

The only part of the film that doesn't sit right with me is the ending; meaning, of course, the dance scene in the lobby of Laura Dern's first character's home. I think it was intended as a catharsis to free yourself from the experience of the film, but as it stands, it's so incongruent with the rest of the film is shocks you out of the atmosphere, instead of slowly letting you out. It's still abjectly weird, but it's unnecessary after the family reunion scene that precedes it. I would have been a million times more satisfied if Lynch had just let the song play and had the screen decked in only blackness.

While developing thoughts about the film (which has also obviously continued through my meandering ramblings within this review), I commented to a friend that Inland Empire may be to narrative cinema what James Joyce's Ulysses was to modernist literature. I don't mean they're stylistically congruent, but rather, Ulysses changed the way novels were written; suddenly, the mind of characters was just as urgent and present as what the character was actually doing (that's reductive, but you get the point). Lynch's film changes the entire viewing experience, totally subverts narrative into an environment, and actually demands a lot of the viewer. Watching Inland Empire is not an easy experience; it's emotionally taxing, as I've mentioned before, because to truly experience the film, you really have to accept your role as a viewer, as an anonymous participant in the event. Suddenly film isn't a passive experience. This film is remarkable, and I have no doubt that if people start making themselves active participants in the film/environment, people will stop fretting about what the narrative "means" because it literally doesn't mean anything. This is not a film about meaning, this is an experience.

And I haven't even watched any of the bonus features yet!

As it stands, the above obviously exists as far more of a rant than most of the items I've posted here. I will undoubtedly clean this up and add more to it, but I really wanted to get these ideas out there to see how other people respond to them, or if anybody has felt the same way. So please, I would really like to hear your thoughts on this ramble and the film! Discussion is a great way to expand ideas about film, and I honestly think that Lynch's Inland Empire deserves to be talked about. I can't help but doubt that this film will be forgotten any time soon.

LEO ES PARDO (IVAN ZULUETA, 1976)

2007-10-11T00:07:00.000-07:00

Ivan Zulueta is the film maker responsible for the somewhat renowned film Arrebato, which I unfortunately haven't watched yet. Four years before he made Arrebato, he directed this short, experimental film. The film takes place almost completely inside of a woman's apartment. She wakes up to utter chaos, yet remains impassive and apathetic to the surreal explosions that occur around her. All of the doors in her room open and shut with an intense rapidity, while the films soundtrack showers the viewer with bullets. The woman, however, remains unmoved.

For the most part. She walks into the bathroom and looking at her mirror, facing herself, she disappears as the light from a window permeates the frame. She might be a ghost, or she might just not be a person-- regardless, she can't look at herself. This happens several times; she reappears, but is then gone again. And repeat. Near the end of the film the woman looks out the window and sees another women picking up a peach pit that the woman in the room had thrown outside earlier. There is an explosion of light in the sky, and the woman in the room becomes temporarily frightened. The lock on the woman's door turns, and the woman from outside enters. It is, in fact, the woman herself. She is forced to confront herself in a more tangible way this time, and she can take it. She cowers in the corner of her room, then disappears. The simulacrum of the woman who has entered from outside removes her sunglass, lays down in the bed, and falls asleep.

While the film is mainly an exercise in montage, it actually ends up being quite a powerful short. There is an utter intensity in the film, due mainly to the ferocity of the soundtrack, which succeeds in pushing the viewer into an anxious emotional state. This anxiety contrasts with the initial impassivity of the woman in the first part of the film; but this dichotomy serves to only increase the tension that's present. The viewer is on edge. In a way the film becomes a bit horrifying. The film explores similar themes to Maya Deren's landmark Meshes of the Afternoon, but while Deren's film was essentially feminine, Zulueta's film is essentially anxious. The films are permeated with completely different tones.

As I briefly mentioned before, much of the film is bathed in rich, natural light. The protagonist interacts with this light in a sort of paranoid dance; mingling with it, hiding from it, rejecting it, and ignoring it. Aside from the aesthetic value that the natural light provides, it works as a catalyst for much of the woman's decisions. In the same way that the light acts as another character, the room itself seems to mirror the woman's emotional state, since she cannot seem to express herself. The chaotic nature of the wake up scene seems to imply a sort of mental chaos, but the woman is divorced from herself and cannot express this emotion through her own body, so the room does it for her. Crumpled up paper spills out of a toilet without any motivation, this frightens the woman; is this representative of more of herself escaping?

Finally, the film is a very sensual film. Not sensual in terms of eroticism, but rather, all five of the senses are directly addressed, insomuch as the medium of film can approach the senses. As I mentioned before, the fervent soundtrack immediately makes the viewer aware of sound, and more so the fact that he is indeed hearing. The images are in constant flux so your eyes cannot relax, there are almost no static shots; everything dynamic. There is also a moment in the film (which recalls the woman in Kenneth Anger's Puce Moment going through her hanger of dresses) when the woman strokes several different fabrics; the saturation of color working to almost extend the physical reality of the fabric to our own fingers. We reach for our own clothes with a desire for touch. Taste is addressed by extended (extensive in the context of a ten minute film) scenes of eating and un-eating the aforementioned peach. The camera lingers on the woman's mouth as she inserts the peach into her mouth, chewing vehemently. Smell is addressed in a very minor, but potent way, by a lingering shot of heat rising from a fresh cup of coffee. The camera is positioned at a subjective angle to imply the viewer in the position of the woman, and the direction of the heat waves, were there no "fourth-wall," would head directly to the viewers nose.

It's an interesting collection of ideas that adds up to a very experiential viewing. It's abstract horror, and it's addressed in a very unique way, and I can safely say that I've never seen a film approach terror in the same intense, sensual manner. It's beautiful.

31 FILMS THAT GIVE YOU THE WILLIES

2007-10-05T21:25:00.000-07:00

Over at Shoot the Projectionist, Ed is asking for people to submit their lists of "31 Films that Give You the Willies." The idea is to compile a list of 31 great horror films. I'm a compulsive list maker, so I've decided to take up the challenge. Not all of the films on this list are films that I would normally talk about here at Esotika, but in honor of Halloween being this month, I thought I'd participate. The list includes only one film per director, and I tried to stick with films that are (more or less) easily classifiable as horror, since most of my favorite films tend to be weird hybrids that cannot fit securely into a single genre. So, without further ado, here's my list, in alphabetical order:

99.9 (Augusti Villaronga, 1997)
All the Colors of the Dark (Sergio Martino, 1972)
Audition (Takashi Miike, 1999)
Baba Yaga (Corrado Farina, 1973)
The Beyond (Lucio Fulci, 1981)

Black Christmas (Bob Clark, 1974)
Blood of Dr. Jekyll (Walerian Borowczyk, 1981)
The Brood (David Carpenter, 1979)
The Church (Michele Soavi, 1989)
Cigarette Burns (John Carpenter, 2005)

Daughters of Darkness (Harry Kumel, 1971)
Devil's Nightmare (Jean Brismee, 1971)
Evil Dead Trap (Toshiharu Ikeda, 1988)
Fascination (Jean Rollin, 1979)
Haunting of Julia (Richard Loncraine)

Inferno (Dario Argento, 1980)
Isle of the Dead (Mark Robson, 1945)
Kairo (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2001)
Last House on Dead End Street (Roger Watkins, 1977)
Legend of Hell House (John Hough, 1973)

Lord of Illusions (Clive Barker, 1995)
Lost Highway (David Lynch, 1997)
Marebito (Takashi Shimizu, 2004)
Outer Space (Peter Tscherkassky, 1999)*
Possession (Andrzej Zulawski, 1981)

Puppet Master (David Schmoeller, 1989)
The Reflecting Skin (Philip Ridley, 1990)
The Sentinel (Michael Winner, 1977)
Silent Night Bloody Night (Theodore Gershuny, 1974)
Symptoms (Jose Larraz, 1974)

The Uninvited (Su-yeon Lee, 2003)
Virgin Among the Living Dead (Jess Franco, 1973)

*I should note that one of the stipulations for Ed's polling was that the films had to be feature films. Tscherkassky's Outer Space is a short film, but it's honestly one of the most terrifying things I've ever seen so I had to include it. Hence, I added a 32nd film to make the list 31 feature films.

Leftovers from my initial list include the following:
Abominable Dr. Phibes (Robert Fuest, 1971)
The Changeling (Peter Medak, 1980)
Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)
Lair of the White Worm (Ken Russell, 1988)
Monster Squad (Fred Dekker, 1987)
Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (Chuck Russell, 1987)
The Omen (Richard Donner, 1976)
Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1977)
Session 9 (Brad Anderson, 2001)
Der Todesking (Jorg Buttgereit, 1990)
The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973)

DEVIATION (JOSE LARRAZ, 1971)

2007-10-05T17:31:00.000-07:00

Before Jose Larraz made his notorious cult classics Vampyres and Symptoms, he helmed three unique British horror films that aren't very well known today. His second feature film, following his debut film, the once-considered lost Whirlpool, was Deviation. It's a quiet little film, with moody atmospherics followed by intense moments of perversity.

The film follows Paul and his mistress Olivia as they are driving back to their hometown after what has presumably been a romantic getaway. Paul isn't quite divorced yet, and this bothers Olivia, as it ostensibly allows him to keep both of his women without feeling guilty. As they are driving through a dark forest, a man in a white poncho jumps in front of the car, and, swerving so as not to hit the man, Paul crashes into a tree. They are met in the woods by Julian and Rebbecca, a mysterious couple who live in the virtually empty woods, and practice taxidermy. During the night Paul gets the feeling that something is wrong, and as he investigates, he eventually gets killed by Rebbecca in a moment of psycho-sexual catharsis. The next morning Julian and Rebbecca tell Olivia that Paul has simply taken the train back to London in order to be at work on time. Meanwhile, the enigmatic couple work on taking Olivia farther and farther into their world of sex and mystery.

The most interesting thing about Larraz, as a director, is his consistency. Of the six films films that I have seen from him, all of them take place mainly in a mysterious large house in the middle of a forest or deserted area. They also all focus on a small group of main characters, only occasionally using others to simply elaborate the relationships between the core characters. Deviation is no exception, and in this film the outside characters are other young hippies that join Julian and Rebbecca at the 'drug orgies' that they host. Larraz is also incredibly skilled at building atmosphere in a very subtle way. The tension of the film climaxes during one of the aforementioned drug parties when Olivia, stoned out of her mind, is resting on Rebbecca while Julian is making love with a beautiful black woman across the room. The two siblings--Julian and Rebbecca--are making constant eye contact as they carry on with their actions, and the scene becomes thick and uncomfortable.

The whole film does a very good job of demonstrating Larraz' skill as a director; the oddball plot which, in lesser hands, could have ended up highly convoluted and obtuse, is played out very clearly, every plot twist being revealed slowly, instead of suddenly, so as to allow the implications of each event to sink in to the viewers skull. The film is also very beautiful, taking place primarily in the middle of the night as Julian and Rebbecca take part in their drug orgies or in murder. Depictions of certain events in the film can certainly be read as having anti- drug implications, but Larraz never makes his approach heavy-handed. In fact, nothing in the film is heavy-handed, everything from the performances to the build-up of tension, to the murders themselves, are understated.

Something else that works really well within the context of the film is how much is left unsaid. There is a pre-credit sequence that doesn't quite fit the narrative structure of the film, but perfectly fits as developing a very tense atmosphere before the movie has even begun. Also, with a single word on a phrenology chart (the word being destructiveness) also establishes a mindset of the characters we see on screen (being Julian and Rebbecca). Julian and Rebbecca themselves have no discernible motivation for their actions, which make them even more sporadic and frightening.

FUSES (CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN, 1967)

2007-10-03T22:01:00.000-07:00

Carolee Schneemann was primarily a visual artists who dealt with themes pertaining to womens bodies, and in turn, feminist thought. Her most notorious film is Fuses, a 23 minute film that attempts to answer the question of whether or not it is possible to shoot the act of sex without falling prey to being "mere pornography" (or to the objectification of women). And that is the primary bulk of the film, Schneemann and her then partner James Tenney having sex, while the collage and colors are layered over the primary images. Occasionally other images break through, such as Schneemann's cat Kitch watching, trees outside, and Schneemann running into an ocean.

As an experimental film it's primary strength comes from marrying it's form with it's content. Instead of using film to merely exploit the physical, material aspects (to no greater end other than theory, as many Materialist [or as Sitney would term, Structuralism] films of the day did, i.e. James Landow, Tony Condrad, Hollis Frampton, etc.) the form of the film physically reflects the content. The act of lovemaking is presumed to be a beautiful, intense thing, so there is a heavy aesthetic consideration. For the first part of the film, the color read cloaks the sex as rapid cuts and film scratches create a mood of chaos than can be considered akin with the chaotic joy of sex. The film stock is beautiful and dirty in the same way that sex can be beautiful and dirty. The camera work is also dislocating and disorienting in the fact that often it takes a few seconds before the viewer can determine what part of the man or womans body he is looking at. In fact, much of the overlaid abstraction present in the first half of the film works to objectively distance the viewer from the act that is appearing on screen. We know what is going on, but our eyes focus more on the abstraction that is present. This change of focus helps to create a sort of emotional tension that can be allied with the feelings that are present during sex.

During sex there is often a giving-up of bodily control to pleasure, and this visual chaos elaborates this. Visceral close-ups are less shocking under layers of scratches and colors; we know what we're seeing but are not offended, nor even put off by them. The aforementioned disorientation helps to view the body parts for what they are; simply human body parts. In this context they are divorced from the eroticizing signifier; the audience is not turned on. But the experience is a pleasant one, as the colorful chaos that decorates the film is, as I've mentioned before, very aesthetically pleasing.

One very interesting element of the film is that Schneemann often uses visual icons to imply a sort of binary opposition. Night is contrasted with day, the male nude body with the female nude body, winter and summer, warm colors and cold colors (the end of the film is primarily masked in blue). The oppositions help to extend the idea of a tension that is present. But what's more interesting to me is that these images are presented in binary oppositions in what could purportedly be termed a feminist film; from my understanding a the major feminist goal (much like that of post-structuralism) is to eradicate the idea of a binary opposition between the sexes. I fear that the opposing images of a man's body followed by a womans somewhat undermines this, but I think (I might be wrong here) that in 1967 the idea of tearing down this opposition wasn't as prevalent in feminist thought.

The only other figure in the film is the cat, Kitch. While it can obviously be read as a stand in for the voyeur, which is ostensibly us (us being the audience), it's hard to not also read the cat as a visual pun for Schneeman's genitalia (pussy/pussy). Another proto-feminist idea present in the film is Schneemann's incorporation of nature shots that punctuate certain sections; leaves, trees, and most importantly, the ocean. It's somewhat archaic to consider the female body as one with nature (although many important Feminists subverted this idea into a sort
of Goddess worship that reclaimed the idea), but it helps to create an easing sense of beauty, the female body juxtaposed with the natural world. Also punctuating the film are light permeated shots of Schneemann running into the ocean, something that can possibly be read as a sort of "return to the womb," a uniquely feminine attribute. Jess Franco would also explore the ocean as an endpoint in many of his films (Sexual Story of O comes to mind immediately), but Schneemann uses it in a significantly female context.

As a film, Fuses suffers from mediocre, somewhat amateur camera work and, more unfortunately, a lack of rhythm in the editing. The ideas of the film remain, but one can't help but wish that some sort of rhythm could have carried the duration of the film in a more interesting manner. Another complaint for me is that the film has no climax, but to have a climax a narrative structure is required, and Schneemann isn't telling a story, she's showing us an act. Regardless, the film is subtly powerful.

Fuses is available to watch online at UbuWeb.

As a note, I plan to start reviewing non-narrative (or minimally narrative) experimental films on here weekly or every other week. There is a plethora of avant-garde work that deals with the same themes that my favorite narrative films do, so I plan on expanding. I reviewed a few experimental films before, but this way I can get a shorter review up weekly and practice writing about non-narrative film, as it's far more difficulty for me. I have a fairly extensive collection of experimental work I'd like to get to eventually, but if you have any recommendations, please let me know, I'm always looking to discover new filmmakers.

Also, I have been told that Blogger has storage space for images, but I can't figure out where to upload images. If anybody could help me out with this I would greatly appreciate it.

THE DEAD MAN (PEGGY AHWESH & KEITH SANBORN, 1987)

2007-09-26T21:23:00.000-07:00

Peggy Ahwesh is a fairly well known filmmaker amongst Super8 aficionados. The Deadman, however, was shot on grainy 16mm film, and if you're familiar with the work of Georges Bataille, it follows his short story Le Mort fairly directly. Keith Sanborn translated the text from the French, and it's apparent that Sanborn's translation is not as accurate as more recent translations done by Bataille scholars, as much of Bataille's nuanced language (here on display within archaic intertitles) is compromised; simplified even.

And really, overall that is the problem with the film. All of Bataille's brilliantly profane ideas are simplified to somewhat naive transgressive images. All of the events in the story are depicted, but Ahwesh and Sanborn do little very little to take advantage of the medium they are presenting the story through. If you've not read the story, I would recommend reading it before (or even instead of, to be honest) watching the film. To reductively simplify; it tells the tale of Marie, who flees the house of the titular dead man, and ends up in a bar. She debases herself and presents herself as a sexual object to the people who populate the bar. A count visits and Marie is immediately struck by his resemblance to the dead man (which is mentioned quickly in a seemingly irrelevant intertitle; while in the text it is a key moment). The count and Marie go back to her house where the dead man still lays, and Marie dies, overdosing on pills (cutting her wrists in the original).

The story, like much of Bataille's work, shows great promise for a visual accompaniment. Which in reality makes the mediocrity of the film even more irritating, as it exists as a totally lost chance. The cast of the film is remarkably amateur, resembling outcasts from the Cinema of Transgression movement without enough awareness or pastiche to let themselves even exist as intentional caricatures, existing rather as just bad cliches themselves. The visual style of the film is muddy and flat, with none of the visually evocative language present in Bataille's text put on display. Everything is remarkably straight-forward, a simple, direct, text to image translation. The sound is also remarkably generic, for what could ostensibly be considered an experimental film. There is only one instance during which anything interesting happens on the soundtrack, but it's so incongruent with the rest of the film that it becomes worthless. The instance I refer to is a two minute scene where the filmmakers add a laugh track to sort of juxtapose a sense of detachment with the (supposed) emotional vapidity of the characters. It's ironic that a lack of acting actually manages to undermine what is supposed to be a lack of emotion, but it does. Really, it feels like a student film.

In an interview with Scott MacDonald, Ahwesh tries to explain that the film is meant to interpret the story of The Dead Man as "one long female jouissance, not a transgression at all." If that was her intention, she fails. While the one amiable thing about the film is it's lead actress, (Jennifer Montgomery, who eventually went on to make the nominally interesting film Art for Teachers of Small Children) the Marie of the film is the only thing congruent with the book, not the other way around. Marie is the only element that through her actions seems to inhabit the idea of drunken squalor, emotional catharsis, and an utter sense of letting go. It's too bad that the rest of the film can't keep up with her.

I suppose the film could be labeled as mildly worthwhile for those interested in seeing another almost verbatim screen adaptations of one of Bataille's texts (aside from the resent feature length film, Christophe Honoré's Ma Mere). But for those more interested in the ideas behind Bataille's texts, and for those already familiar with the stories, there's not much to see here.

Private and Public Viewing Spaces

2007-09-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've done much here; Only one review throughout all of August, and being more of a personal essay than a "review," per se, is surely disappointing to some readers. I apologize; starting in mid-June (which marks the decline of my rate of posting) I started working full time hours after having no hours or limited part time hours up until that point, so I lost a lot of the time I had formerly had available. But that's just an excuse, I suppose.

In reality, the truth is that I've only watched three movies in almost three weeks. And, something remarkably different than my normal circumstances, two out of three of them were in large movie theaters. The two movies that I saw (Rob Zombie's re-imagining of Halloween and the High School comedy Superbad) are largely inconsequential to this post, but rather, seeing these two dichotically opposed films in the same "environment" has gotten me thinking.

Ninety-five percent of my film viewing experiences occur in a private space; namely, by myself in my bedroom where I have control over the lighting, the volume, outside distractions (to an extent; there is still ambient noise that filters in from the open window to the outside world), and the actual duration of the viewing experience (meaning, of course, whether I watch the film straight through, pause to take a break, finish over a two day period, etc.). Inside of a movie theater, in what is an ostensibly public space, I have no control over any of these factors.

Shocking news, of course, but what I find interesting is that with my own personal viewing habits, a fuller immersion is always more easily accomplished in the public space (there are exceptions to this, however, that will be touched upon later). When I have control over all of the factors in my film viewing, I tend to take advantage of that, and take breaks, pause the film to take a short nap if I'm tired, or space the film out to many different sittings (which helps when I'm busy). This is, however, an obviously totally different way of viewing a film; fragmented instead of a whole, which is what creates the divide between an "immersive" viewing and an analytical viewing.

This also explains why it is generally more difficult for me to sit down and write about something I've watched in a single sitting in a cinemaplex instead of something that I've watched for intentionally analytical purposes in the isolation of my room. In fact, with virtually every film I review, if it's a film that I can really emotionally connect to, it's more or less impossible for me to write anything from an initial viewing. Any sort of intense emotional connection sees me viewing the film in a sort of vicarious escapism mode, which I absolutely love. The escapism aspect is what attracted me to cinema in the first place, and the chance to revisit the feelings that launched my current, well, life is always a pleasure.

Obviously when I'm watching a film that I know ahead of time is going to be difficult (Duelle, for instance) or without subtitles (La Gemella Erotica) or both (Slow Slidings of Pleasure) I set myself up as an analytical viewer. If I am in the mind frame to be very attentive and an active viewer of the film, anything that I end up writing undoubtedly comes fairly easy. I have to note, however, that I really enjoy this method of viewing films as well. I really just love watching films in general, so the avenue of viewing that I'm taking is irrelevant to the pleasure I can get.

I will admit, since I am a human being who is prone to opinions and mood swings, there are many times when I really only feel like watching movies for one avenue of viewing. I go through phases where I'm at the video store every day (despite owning an intense amount of flicks that I still haven't watched) renting videos just as a way to kill time and be entertained. During these phases it's doubtful that I'll get much pleasure out of watching something analytically, so I save that route for another day. There are other times when I can only derive viewing pleasure from the analytical viewing, when I have no interest in the escapism or simple catharsis.

I really didn't expect to come to any sort of main point in this thread other than to expand upon the way I approach the film viewing experience. For the record, if you're wondering what I thought about the two films I saw in the theaters my opinions are as follows: Halloween was interesting in it's completely objective/distanced display of casual violence (by a kid no less), but over all was neither remarkable nor a disappointment. Nothing that I could get worked up to write anything in depth on.

Superbad was interesting to me because I'm not generally a fan of comedy films; in fact I normally avoid them. I saw this on a whim and wasn't disappointed. I think the main reason it works is because the film recognizes that at the end of the day, life isn't actually funny. Of course, that is only slightly built into the film, there is still plenty of ridiculous juvenilia that occasionally distracts from any sort of enjoyment.

All in all, I just wanted to break the blog's silence and say something at least. I'm currently, in fragments, reviewing David Lynch's Inland Empire for the first time since I saw it in theaters back in January (?). I can assure that I already have plenty say about that and I've still got quite a bit to go.

HOUR OF THE WOLF (INGMAR BERGMAN, 1968)

2007-08-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

aka Vargtimmen

With Ingmar Bergman's recent death on the minds of cinephiles every where, I feel it's some what of a duty to pass a comment on a director who I once claimed my absolute favorite. When I was a kid I was obsessed with horror movies, a love that clearly still shines. At age four my favorites were Beetlejuice and Ghostbusters, and by the time my mother was allowing me to wander off in the video store by myself I would spend my time memorizing the terrifying covers of the horror section (I was always particularly intrigued by the overly grotesque covers of the Nightmare on Elm Street series). Naturally, it wasn't until a few years later that I could actually see the contents of the tapes that these grotesque covers contained, but to my mind it was well worth the wait. I spent the rest of my early school years devouring every horror film I could come into contact with (keep in mind that's really not that much to a 13 year old at a Blockbuster or Grocery Store video section).

Once I was a Sophomore in High School, I managed to get into the only Film Studies class that my school offered. It was by a fluke in my guidance counselor's attention that I even managed to get into the class (it was a class for Seniors), but in retrospect the class couldn't have come at a better time. For the first time I was exposed to foreign and art house films; all of the basics from Eisenstein to Fellini. Naturally this included Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal.

While I've never been to keen on period pieces (which is what a majority of Bergman's films ostensibly are), something about the film more or less blew my mind. It was intelligent, beautiful to look at, existentially terrifying, and important. Following this class I went through a period of trying to catch up with every "important" art house film in existence; luckily by this point I had discovered an alternative video store (which I would later end up working at for five consecutive years) that stocked films that regular video stores didn't, and I had by saving hard earned cashed at minimal waged retail jobs bought myself my own TV, VCR, and low-end DVD player.

During this period I watched every Bergman film I could get my hands on. More than the video store, the library was most helpful here, as this was when DVD was still a new format so not many of his films were available on DVD yet. Luckily the local library had plenty of his films on VHS, and it was here that I encountered Hour of the Wolf.

I didn't quite make the connection at the time, but Hour of the Wolf has become a sort of signifier to me since then. Bergman is often the film-snobs God, and there's nothing the film snob likes to do more than to put down genre films. Hour of the Wolf became my hat- trick, it was a genre film that the director who epitomized "ART HOUSE" himself had made. It was a connection, it dug genre film out of the gutter and gave me an easy segue to make any arguments I had developed.

Years later I am comfortable having my views on film as it is without having to rely on this calling-card; in fact, until today I hadn't watched a Bergman film in probably four years, having found a niche that I much prefer over the often stuffy European masters. But with Bergman's recent death I remembered his horror film, that I had held so dear for more of a conceptual reasoning than anything else, and I felt that it was time to revisit.

Hour of the Wolf tells the tale of the artist Johan, and his subservient wife, Alma. The two live on a windy island that is more or less cut off from humanity. Johan is suffering as an artist and ghosts from his past keep appearing, especially during the hour of the night which he terms the titular hour of the wolf, "the hour between night and dawn[, ...]the hour when most people die." Eventually his despair and haunted past climax at a mysterious castle that is inhabited by a cast of grotesque characters who eventually lead to his undoing.

As usual for an Ingmar Bergman film, the technicalities of the film are excellent. Sven Nykvist's gorgeous high contrast black and white cinematography helps to heighten the surreality that permeates every scene, especially a super-high contrast scene shot on a beach involving a little boy. The acting is aptly creeping and intense, though occasionally deviates too far into the realm of theatricality for my liking. The one major complaint that I have with the film is the framing technique that places the film as Alma telling a story, breaking the fourth wall and directly addressing the camera while trying to show her grief; it falls a little flat and distracts from the story at the heart of the film.

The best thing about the film is Bergman's liberal use of the fantastique; whether it be in the nightmarish castle scenes, or in the approach he takes to Max von Sydow's utterly passionate belief in the ghosts that haunt him. In fact, it is these fantastique scenes that place this film above Bergman's other films in my mind. Bergman fails to ask any new questions in the film, but rather he's allowed himself to somewhat escape from the bleak hyper-reality that he normally dwells in and lets himself explore these questions in a new venue; the world of the unreal. Though surreal and fantastique elements aren't totally unique to this film (in two of Bergman's most well known films, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries these aspects are present), but it is in this film they are most sinister and present.

The film is not perfect, and in the realm of horror films there are many other films that succeed to a far greater extent, but it certainly stands out (in the same way Fellini's Toby Dammit segment of Spirits of the Dead) as a majorly canonical European director taking a stab at genre film. In fact, it's arguable that Bergman's art house pretensions are the only things that are stopping this film from being a masterpiece; Bergman's reliance of ennui extends too far and somewhat puts a damper on the suspense/horror rather than extends it.

So while Bergman may not be as important to me now as he once was, it's ignorant to deny his place in the history of cinema. I don't really feel much "sadness" for his death other than one feels when another human being dies; rather, he had been working for a long time, and he had accomplished a lot, so if anything he succeeded in fulfilling a dream that many men have; he will be remembered.

LA PUNITION (PIERRE-ALAIN JOLIVET, 1973)

2007-07-19T13:28:00.000-07:00

For a brief period of time in European genre cinema, sadomasochistic themed films were all the rage. Jess Franco doled out plenty with his personal touch, Just Jaeckin hit it big with his glossy adaptation of The Story of O, and Radley Metzger even hoped on the bandwagon in true European style with certain scenes from Camille 2000 and the some-what hardcore The Image; and those titles just touch the tip of the iceberg. Many of the films were utter exploitation, and others approached the subject matter with a specific intellectual bend, which was perfectly fitting towards the subject matter.

In 1973, Pierre-Alain Jolivet released La Punition (which translated to "The Punishment" in English). Jolivet had began his directorial career directing an adaptation of a play written by Fernando Arrabel, La Grand Ceremonial. Today, none of his films seem to have any official releases (outside a few VHS releases throughout the world), and throughout my searching I've come across almost no information on the man's career, or his films. To me, he remains a mystery.

I had seen a few still frames from La Punition on a now absent website a few years ago and they managed to stay in my mind. The images showed a decrepit, almost empty hotel room except for a bedframe and a cowering naked woman. The images alone were powerful enough; I made a mental note to try to check out the film. I finally managed to track the film down a few weeks ago, and sat down to watch it tonight.

From what I can discern of the plot (another no English viewing), La Punition tells the story of a woman (played by Karin Schubert, who later went on to hardcore pornography) who gets roped into a prostitution ring while developing a relationship with a man who's involved. She fails to please a trick and her boss forces her into confinement in a room in a hotel that is completely devoid of furnishings except for a bed frame, a locked, white cupboard, and a floor covered with dead leaves (an amazing visual). While in the room she is stripped naked and in a series of tableaus degraded and whipped, forced to fulfill every man who enters desire (hence the title; it's her punishment). While in the room she regularly hears another girl next door howling in fear and pain.

It's a sort of odd film; aside from the fact that I'm obviously missing loads due to my not understanding the dialogue, there's a lot going on here. The film opens (after cutting from a scene that is repeated once again near the end of the film) in a sort of art gallery/party. The room is mostly white, and upper class men and woman mingle around. An overwhelming sound of gunshots sand helicopters drowns out the soundtrack, which is soon revealed to be a game that a man is playing. A pinball machine is shown with legs coming out so that while playing it creates the visual implication of fucking a woman. And then comes dinner; grotesque animal heads and body parts decorate trays of snacks and food, which the men and women greedily devour.

I can't put my finger on exactly why it was, but something about this scene reminded me a lot of the opening scene (after the credits sequence) of Alain Robbe-Grillet's Eden and After in the cafe Eden. It might have something to do with the lack of a character that the camera is focusing on; rather the camera smoothly glides around revealing the people and items in the room, while the disturbing soundtracks creates a sort of nullified divide.

There are also brief moments of intense violence throughout the film which also seem to stem from the grosteque art of the opening scene. It comes rarely and as a surprise, so it's very effective when it does come, and suitably disrupts the mood.

If there's one thing I can say about the film it's that Pierre-Alain Jolivet has a remarkable sense of aesthetics. Almost every scene in the movie is either decked out in subtly bright colors, or, as in the hotel room, the visual aesthetics emphasize the emotional position that the character is in. There is a copious use of red and green lights, and there are many tracking shots that move in truly unique ways around what's being depicted.

The soundtrack is also great, varying from mid-70s party-psych to more harrowing piano chords for the sadistic scenes. The sound effects are wonderful too, from the aforementioned use of sound to put the audience off guard in the first scene to the way that every telephone conversation is heard with a creepy reverb that seems to create a mood of distance and threat.

I can't comment too much on the narrative, as I still feel I'm missing a great deal by not understanding the dialogue (more than normal compared to some of the other films I've reviewed without English options), but overall I believe that this is a film worth watching, and probably revisiting, if for the visual aesthetics alone.

EXHIBITION II (JEAN-FRANCOIS DAVY, 1978)

2007-07-16T22:24:00.000-07:00

Exhibtion II succeeds in being worthwhile and interesting for one main reason: Sylvia Bourdon. While most remembrance she inspires today involves her pornographic career, particularly her turn in Claude Mulot's delirious Pussy Talk, Sylvia's life itself is far more interesting than any of the pornographic films she ever made.

This short documentary, which clocks in at just over an hour (apparently scenes that were shot featuring insertion, which would have helped to sell the film on the pornographic circuit and pad out the run-time, had their soundtracks unknowingly destroyed), followings a short period in Sylvia's life. A trip to Greece, an evening out to dinner, a partouze she has organized with the centerpiece being her slave Jan, and a more intimate session with Jan, much to the dismay of one of Sylvia's less extreme friends. I'm tempted to say that what's depicted on screen would be just as interesting even if there had just been a camera in the room, running, filming everything going on, but there are certain decisions made throughout the film where the camera pans to reveal an expression, whether on Sylvia or one of her friends faces, and it's these moments that help one to realize that the film is just as much Davy's as Sylvia's.

As a "documentary" it remains fairly objective, allowing Sylvia to passionately explain her actions and still keeping in comments from others that attempt to persuade otherwise. It's built up mostly of fascinating conversations, instead of sexual action, and it's for this reason that it remains so interesting. Sylvia is a very intelligent and passionate woman, fully aware and conscious of everything she does, and fully capable of dealing with any affect that her actions have on her. While many porn documentaries are somewhat exploitive in their depictions of porn stars as fairly naive and, in some cases, dumb, neither of these adjectives can be applied to Sylvia.

However, the one short coming of the film itself is it's fragmentation. I had just finished reading Bourdon's brilliant autobiography, translated into English as Love is a Feast, and the film served as a perfect compendium; visually depicting events and conversations that Bourdon mentions in her book. It serves to elevate the events of the book; as is it not in a book where our imagination has to create the visuals that we are reading? The film serves to illustrate, and it more than likely lives up to any personally realized visualization. The film let me put names to faces, and allowed the attitudes and ideologies of the book to transcend simple ideas; they became (closer) to reality.

For those of you unfamiliar with the great Ms. Bourdon, allow me to quote a somewhat lengthy excerpt from her autobiography:

"I don't need anyone on a Harley-Davidson. That's one of Serge Gainsbourg's songs. I remember a warm, rainy night in the Champs-Elysees. We had been to the cinema, then to a restaurant, and afterwards we had gone to pick up Eric's motor-bike. Seized by a sudden inspiration he sat me in front, facing him, skirt hitched up, and started off. I never wear panties, it's against my principles. So there we were zooming up to the Etoile. With rain in our eyes, the crazy night, my lips in Eric's neck, we were laughing like anything, we were happy, the sky was seesawing, the apartment blocks were playing meccan with the stars, and the Arc de Triomphe was rolling because it was drunk. It was an evening when modern men and women change their faces because they have finally recognised each other, when little children dream of sailing ships they'll go off in one day, when the fish in the Tuileries ponds think, with melancholy, about arctic whales. A magical evening, in which tenderness flows in waves over the cafe terraces, in which the rediscovery of the sea and of fossils is the order of the day, when everyone knows that everything is possible without waiting for tomorrow. I undid Eric's zip, I like Montherlant when he talks about rigour, I like Eric's rigorous prick, we're going to drink a cool Sauvignon straight from the spring, I raised myself and got impaled on my friend, who kept his machine roaring up the Avenue de la Grande-Armee. I kept coming and going on him, lighted windows were listening to Guy Lux, a policeman's white kepi never realised what was happening to us, the bike was doing fifty miles an hour, an outraged taxi hooted virtuously, I started to come at the Neuilly bridge, the rain was never, never going to stop. The roars, the acceleration, the dipped headlights, the tide was rising, it was so good to keep going quicker and quicker, more and more vigorously. We were tightrope walkers, we were on a wire five hundred metres up, I was swallowing the wind and Eric's leather jacket, Eric was beginning to zigzag with emotion. We exploded at the same instant, near the Aurore tower. Screwing becomes Electra. You who have never been fucked on a motor-bike, you will never know the colour of the stars."

I have chosen this quote to demonstrate many things: first of all, her utter exhibitionism, which is obviously well suited for a film entitled Exhibition II. Secondly, her enthusiasm for, well, as she would put it, fucking. And finally, how utterly happy she really is with her life. The film ends in a candid moment in which Jean-Francois Davy asks her if she is happy. She replies that she is always happy, and by watching her and reading her words, we can understand that this is the truth.

Another thing that warrants mentioning is a bit more about the aforementioned scenes of sadomasochism. They create the most sensational elements of spectacle within the film; Davy's camera remaining unflinching as she whips, knifes, and belittles her slave. It is obvious that Bourdon is no professional Sadist; S/M is not her life, rather it's just one of the many components that make up her intense sexually. But despite the fact she is (comparatively) an amateur, she is utterly enthusiastic, which is revealing. Following the scenes of the spectacle Davy's camera lingers on heated debates between Sylvia, Jan, and Sylvia's acquaintances who have just witnessed the event. It is refreshing to allow the players in the psycho-sexual game to justify and discuss their actions/preferences, instead of just being presented to an exploitative end.

So while the film isn't so much innovative or special in itself, it exists, in addition to Sylvia Bourdon's autobiography, as a refreshing and fully entertaining document of one of history's most joyful, hedonistic women.

^{It is worth nothing that while the English translation of Love is a Feast is currently out of print, it can be obtained easily enough through a library or for not too expensive at OOP Book outlets}

INFORMAL UPDATE / BLOGS THAT MAKE YOU THINK

2007-07-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

Lately I haven't been updating as often as I was a month ago. I've been working a lot more hours than normal recently, and unfortunately have fallen behind my goal of at least one review per week (generally I try to do more). I apologize, but at least I'm making some extra money so I'll be able to afford a few more DVDs and film books than normal!

Also, almost an entire month ago I was awarded, by two fantastic blogs (Cinebeats and Flickhead), the Thinking Blogger's Award! I, as it seems like a lot of the blogging community, am not too keen on memes, but I'm very flattered that I received this great acknowledgment, yet alone twice! It's always really great to hear people comment that they appreciate what you're doing, so I'm finally following up on this like I was planning on doing long ago.

To begin, there are certain rules you have to follow:

Thinking Blogger’s Award Rules

If, and only if your blog is one that is tagged on my list below, you must write a post with links to five other blogs you like that consistently make you think (hence, the Thinking Blogger’s Award).

Link to this post so people will know whose good idea all this was.

Proudly display the “Thinking Blogger Award” logo with a link to the post you wrote.

I'm generally remarkably bad at following rules as far as these things go, but surprisingly, this time I'm actually imposing another rule upon myself: I'm not going to name any blogs that have, to my knowledge, already received the award. Of course, I don't read every blog on the internet, but I figure the addition of this rule can help generate more linkage for more people!

I also have to clarify that every blog on my blogroll makes me think, and I fully support all of them, plus many more great blogs that I don't link, so this is just small taste. Like Kimberly at Cinebeats, I would also recommend checking out each and every site that I link! And now, on with it!

1. Ombres Blanches
I found Ombres Blanches through another favorite blog that has already recieved the Thinking Blogger's Award; Jahsonic. Andrej's blog takes very interesting looks into all types of culture, from literature to film, to art, and more. He seems to share really similar aesthetics to me in terms of what he blogs about, so I can always count on his posts to be both informative and interesting; and amid a sea of culture there aren't that many people whose interests seem to mesh with mine very well! He's also been utterly helpful to me in tracking down some out of print books and articles, and he has spoken enthusiastically about contributing to the Esotika website once I get it off the ground.

2. I'm In a Jess Franco State of Mind
Bob Monell is, in my mind, one of the definite authority on Franco films, and he shares his thoughts and comments on the man through this blog. He also comments about other films, often including connections to Franco films. Since this summer I have moved from being very enthusiastic about Franco to being completely obsessed with Franco, his blog is always helpful and makes me think.

3. Giallo Fever
K H Brown runs this wonderful blog that continues very detailed, intelligent reviews of every possible gialli film you could think of; and if it's not there yet, it undoubtedly will be soon! He also has very insightful comments on genre related books, as well as posing somewhat overarching questions about genre films themselves that always get me thinking.

4. Desistfilm
Desistfilm is a new film blog published by one of my real life acquaintances, Ron Felton. Ron used to live a few doors down from my house, and it was always a great time talking to him about how absurd current culture is, and it was always nice to have "intellectual" conversations with an actual person. He just recently got into film, and it seems that he always has something insightful to say. He's recently told me that he found himself only wanting to review films that he hated (he finds it easier apparently), and he doesn't like the attitude that presents, so he was stopping. However, I'm hoping that with some encouragement he'll continue!

5. Documents
Documents is a blog that often publishes insightful posts about two of my favorite things: Georges Bataille and black metal. Not only does he talk about these two things, but he often successfully connects themes between the two, which never ceases to amaze me, since he's always spot on with his connections. Of course, Georges Bataille and black metal are not the only two things he blogs about, his blog also approaches culture in great ways.

DELIRIUM (RENATO POLSELLI, 1972)

2007-07-15T22:45:00.000-07:00

aka Delirio Caldo

Delirium is Renato Polselli's 1972 feature that tells the tale of a psychiatrist who himself has serious sadistic tendencies. He also suffers a sort of depersonalization where he spends most of his days denying to himself that he is, indeed, psychotic. The film opens with Herbert (played by Polselli regular and former body-builder Mickey Hartigay) strangling a young girl after he picks her up from a bar. Once he arrives home the viewer becomes aware of the intense relationship that he and his wife, Marcia, (played by the always wonderful Rita Calderoni) endure-- Herbert is utterly impotent in the bedroom, having been unable to consummate his marriage with his wife who, regardless or circumstance, is utterly in love with him.

The rest of the film explores more murders that are being committed; some by Herbert out of pure sexual desire, and others by Marcia out of pure love for her husband, and out of the fear that she will lose him (it should be noted that this isn't particularly a spoiler; it's fairly obvious, and the reason that the film succeeds is due to this relationship). Along the way a voyeuristic park watchman gets pulled into the affairs, and Herbert believes he has a scapegoat.

What could have ended up a ridiculously "obvious" giallo is saved by Polselli's more than competent direction, and the subtleties of the story. At the heart of it all, what is normally described as "sleazy" and a "series of shock scenes," is actually an amazing love story. I should also point out, that for the purpose of this review, I am referring to the Italian edit of the film. The film itself exists in multiple versions; the American version is wrapped up in a sort of Vietnam War story that places all the action either as a dream of a veteran or as a direct result of the psychological stress--which, it should be noted, compared to the Italian version is sort of a cop out. There is also a French version available which I haven't seen, but from what I understand this version significantly ups the sleaze quotient.

Something that seems to be repeatedly overlooked in many of Polselli's brilliant films are their emotional intensity. In fact, Rita Calderoni and Mickey Hartigay's performances in this film somewhat resemble the performances of Isabelle Adjani and Sam Niell in Andzrej Zulawski's equally (if not more) successful 1981 film, Possession. The intensity of the performances in this film can seem, well, delirious and over-the-top if experienced with only a passing glance, but within the context of the extreme relationship that is confidently presented the actions and emotions are valid. Herbert is constantly battling with himself and his psycho-sexual desires, while Marcia is utterly dependent upon her impotent husband, and has severe reliance issues.

Near the end of the film these characters emotional states climax, and the film turns into an almost anarchic frenzy of desire and sadness. Marcia runs around the house screaming, unable to cope with the fact that her relationship with her husband is about to be severed, and Herbert tries unsuccessfully to stay in control (which perfectly echoes his sexual impotence), while also distancing himself from his wife and preparing to place the blame on her. The only thing that is briefly distracting in these final scenes is the somewhat random appearance of Marcia's sister, who suddenly also displays an intense dependency on her sister. Luckily the addition is only briefly jarring, as the intensity of the third characters emotional state helps to heighten the overall feel of the scene, and is at the same level as the previously displayed mania.

It is worth nothing Polselli's philosophical background when discussing the film, as the main driving forces behind each character seems to be a conflict with the self. In fact, the films climax almost shows a dissatisfaction with the philosophical mode of thought, because no matter how much these characters try to justify and analyze their actions, their intellect cannot surpass pure emotion, something that is common in contemporary Western thought.

Also, as in Polselli's later Reincarnation of Isabel, the use of music helps to heighten the emotional levels, helping to sustain the intensity. The editing of the film also occasionally echoes the chaotic nature of the individual, with many cuts that will begin with a fast pan before the actual cut occurs, which creates a sort of dizzying effect that no doubt is meant to emphasize the disorganized mind.

Watching the Italian cut of the film I was simply amazing at how successfully emotional the film was, and how deeply it was affecting me. The characterization is handled so well that the viewer can actually empathize with Herbert, who is decidedly the villain of the picture. It's also always very interesting to me when I experience these almost visceral reactions from films that are marginalized and passed off as sleaze or trash-- let it be known that the intense relationship between Herbert and Marzia affected me far more than any so called "romance" film ever has, because it contains something that most straight-laced romance, or even straight-laced drama films lack; an emotional intensity that is undeniably a human factor.

SLOW SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE (ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, 1974)

2007-07-04T21:46:00.000-07:00

aka Glissements progressifs du plaisir

Slow Slidings of Pleasure is a very difficult film. It's remarkably intelligent in both it's construction and execution, and it features images that are utterly sensational. Despite my affinity for experimental and avant-garde film, I've often commented on the fact that I wish the amazing structural ideas and other experimental techniques would be put forth telling a story-- Don't get me wrong, I love experimental and avant-garde film exactly how it is, but as far as my personal interest in films go, I'm always drawn more towards amazing ideas and images if there is a narrative strand holding the images and ideas together. Incredibly enough, Slow Slidings of Pleasure manages to do just this; use an almost structural/materialist construction to deliver an utterly enigmatic and interesting story.

The film depicts the story of an unnamed protagonist (in the cine-roman of the film, the character is named Alice, but that name is never used in the actual film) who is being investigated for the murder of her roommate. The girls live in what appears to be a sort of nunnery, or at least an apartment where the nuns are overlooking everything. She acquires a lawyer, and the lawyer somewhat falls for the young girls sensual charms. Throughout the entire film, elements of the incident that may or may not have been a murder are told, in repeated ways. The girl is at "court," and throughout the film the girl deconstructs the events of the narrative to the judge. This creates a tension, as obviously a judge must organize events in order to objectively make a decision, but the girl is utterly against it. The girl, as Robbe-Grillet has said himself, represents freedom.

As my short plot synopsis indicates, the narrative is more or less quite convoluted, but not impossible to follow. While I'm sure I could have gotten far more understanding had I seen the film with English subtitles, I feel that there was enough worthwhile in the film to discuss. First of all, in the way that the girl deconstructs the narrative, events are played out in what I describe as a visual equivalent of Robbe-Grillet's 1957 novel, Jealousy. The novel, which is a perfect example of the whole nouveau-roman style that Robbe-Grillet was key in developing, tells the story of a relationship that is possibly being compromised by an outsider. It focuses on key events that reveal a very subtle sort of jealousy, hence the title of the book. The key events are told over and over again with slight variations, allowing each time to be more emotionally revealing to the reader while keeping a very objective, almost anti-emotional viewpoint. The film also carries several key events that are shown over and over again, except instead of only slight variations (in the novel it's almost as if the event is being depicted from an alternate angle; it's another way of looking at the same event) the events play out with different characters; whether it be events happening to the girl herself, or the girl reenacting events on her roommate Laura or one of the much beloved mannequins (which lend themselves to many of the visually incredible scenes in the film).

The way that these variations are introduced into the film is where I can apply my aforementioned notion that it takes a structural construction and applies it to narrative (in order to deconstruct the narrative in fact!). The film takes full advantage of what would be referred to as "punctuation." The punctuation in a normal commercial film will be something simple like a fade, or a dissolve, or some other transitional device that has no relevance the narrative. For the punctuation in this film, Robbe-Grillet uses singular images of objects that may or may not play into the narrative. For instance, between two scenes, instead of a simple cut (which leaves punctuation out) or a fade-out, Robbe-Grillet inserts an image of an open-toed show on the beach. Eventually, as the film gains in momentum, these punctuations stop being quick shots, and turn into scenes in themselves, yet they still don't play into linear narrative in any clear fashion.

So, aside from the protagonist literally deconstructing the story line in her conversations with her accusers, the film itself deconstructs a linear time line and exists in an utterly non-linear fashion, existing on several planes of existence, many of which might not have actually happened. If you can catch on to Robbe-Grillet's methods early on in the film (I suppose in this instance some familiarity with his ideas is helpful prior to viewing) it becomes much easier to read, even without full understanding. On that note, I'm actually not sure that it's that much of a handicap to not understand the dialogue, as often in the film Robbe-Grillet will use non-congruous, diegetic soundtrack elements that obscure the dialogue itself! While it may seem like a frustrating concept, it actually comes together into something wholly unique and stimulating.

Despite being such an intellectual film at heart, Robbe-Grillet ran into trouble with the authorities when the film was first released. In Italy a judged declared Robbe-Grillet guilty of violating morals, and therefore obscene, due to the fact that the judge himself did not understand the film and therefore declared the sadomasochistic elements of the film unnecessary! Which, as Robbe-Grillet points out himself as being quite ironic, as a major element of the film is a judge prosecuting the girl because he cannot make sense of events (refer to my comments earlier about judges looking to organize, while the girl looking to liberate through the deconstruction of narrative).

As I briefly mentioned above, the soundtrack for the film is also very unique. Aside from Michael Fano's (a regular collaborator with Robbe- Grillet) brilliantly unnerving score, elements of the soundtrack often serve to obscure (but elaborate) the plot itself. Robbe-Grillet makes full use of what I've often referred to as "incongruous" sound (if there is a more legitimate term for this, please let me know)-- that is, diegetic sound that is cleary in the narrative realm, yet doesn't match up with anything being depicted on screen. While these elements of the soundtrack may seem odd, if you pay enough attention you can often notice that they actually serve to heighten the narrative. To quote Robbe-Grillet about an example;

"[...] the lawyer and the girl are talking in the cell, with the girl mocking the world and saying, 'Well, they don't behead little girls.' During this scene, the sound of working constructing a guillotine comes through the window. [...] I myself know it is the sound of a guillotine under construction, so it is a private joke for me but not for many others, because they cannot discern the nature of the sound. But the sound of one of the workers whistling while working can be heard distinctly."

While obviously this element of the film is rather obtuse and esoteric, the fact that Robbe-Grillet is doing so much with the soundtrack itself (something often overlooked in the construction of a film) is a very positive thing. It's a technique to elevate the art form that not many people have taken notice of.

One final thing to note about the film, that is probably obvious, is how incredible the visuals are. Robbe-Grillet films consistently have stark, unique, memorable visuals, and this is no different. A majority of the film is shot indoors on sets that are stark white, so all of the colors of the characters, and their blood, and any other visceral element contrasts greatly, placing a brilliant emphasis on the actions of these characters. There is also an amazing scene which visually invokes Georges Bataille; in a sort of charade that recreates a later event in the film, the girl pours deep, blood-red wine on her roommate and then breaks eggs, dropping them onto the girls body, the eggs slowly sliding off. The egg, aside from being a symbol for a number of corporeal images/actions also directly refers to a charges sexuality present in Bataille's The Story of the Eye. However, the most striking images in the film undoubtedly come from a scene where the girl and her roommate are on the beach, each carrying half of a mannequin to a metal bed frame, partially submerged into the sand. They assemble the mannequin and bind her to the bed frame, visually recreating a sadomasochistic scene, and then bloody the plastic body. It is a scene like this that is a key to keep in mind when looking at the sadomasochistic scenes that Robbe-Grillet places actual human bodies, instead of mannequins in. It's all about representation, and how representation affects the narrative.

In conclusion, Slow Slidings of Pleasure is an aurally and visually brilliant piece of cinema that forces the viewer to deconstruct narrative norms in a film and view events from different, possible narrative instances.

_{Note: Quotes and historical information regarding the film come from an interview with Alain Robbe-Grillet in The Erotic Dream Machine: Interviews with Alain Robbe-Grillet on His Films, written by Anthony N. Fragola and Roch C. Smith, published by the Southern Illinois University Press.}

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS (JUST JAECKIN, SHUJI TERAYAMA, and WALERIAN BOROWCYZK, 1979)

2007-07-01T23:36:00.000-07:00

For a brief period in film history, anthology genre films were all the rage. Most often recognized in the horror genre, with examples ranging from the notorious made-for-TV Karen Black vehicle, Trilogy of Terror, to the Amicus omnibus House That Dripped Blood, among countless other examples. It was a format that worked decent with horror; allowing three (or more) films to be packed into a maximum runtime, allowing the films to approach the actual HORROR quicker, and not have to worry half as much about filling a 90 minute runtime. It could be said that if the directors were really into an ~40 minute time frame, they could have just made short films. But a short film isn't as financially viable as a feature film, so the anthology film was a compromise, allowing filmmakers to work with smaller time slots while still allowing for general public exhibition.

Private Collections is one of the only films that I can think of to apply this structure to "erotica" that's not a farce or comedy (like Vittorio De Sica's Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow). And it's uniqueness extends even further by the directors who were involved: Just Jaeckin was more or less internationally famous for his glossy adaptations of Emmanuelle and The Story of O, Shuji Terayama was a true aesthetic rebel who was not so internationally known, and even known in his native country as Japan mostly for his poetry and plays, and Polish director Walerian Borowczyk was more or less critically panned after he abandoned his groundbreaking animations in favorite of erotic feature films. In fact, it's such an odd combination of talents that it's hard to imagine exactly what the producers were thinking, but nevertheless, the film is a nice example of varying strains of erotism in the cinema.

The first segment of the anthology is Just Jaeckin's Isle of the Sirens. It begins with Benoit (played by Roland Blanche) falling of his ship due to a cyclone, waking up on a seemingly abandoned island. For a few days he does all he can to survive, trying to draw as much attention to himself as possible. One day he thinks he sees a beautiful woman (played by Laura Gemser), but she disappears after a few seconds and he blames his sighting on the intensity of the sun. However, the next morning he wakes up he finds a basket full of fresh fruit left near where he was sleeping. He then sets off to find the enigmatic woman. Eventually he does, and as he finally encounters her, he hears a boat approaching the island. He decides the beautiful woman is more important than his rescue, so he hurriedly tears down his flags and goes to her. For a while he is living in an island paradise, with four beautiful nude woman caring for his every whim. However, as time drags on he begins to suspect that things are not quite what they seem, and that a terrible fate may await him...

Jaeckin's trademark soft-focus cinematography is on full display here, highlighting the rich hues present on the beautiful, tropical island, and the beautiful curves and skin of the four "native" women. It's also interesting to note that the ending of this short comes closer to approaching "horror" than anything else Jaeckin has ever done. Unfortunately the "shock" at the end is fairly cliche and obvious. The violence at the end is also followed by an annoying "it was just a dream" coda, but this coda also allows for the viewer to interpret the events as some sort of bizarre fantasy, as it is rooted in simpler, base animalistic desires.

For what it is, it's a very brief enjoyable piece of Eurotica. As I mentioned before, it's beautiful to look at (Jaeckin was trained as a fashion photographer) and Pierre Bachelet's score is just as up to par as it is in any of his other collaborations with Jaeckin. The narrative also comes to fruition with minimal dialogue, and virtually no clear communication between Benoit and the island's mysterious inhabitants. But, it brings nothing new to the table, and aside from aesthetics barely transcends mere entertainment, which admittedly isn't a bad thing in itself.

The next segment is Shuji Terayama's The Grass Labyrinth, which, unlike the other two films in the compendium, had a release of it's own, outside of the film, in Terayama's native Japan. The film is the tale of Akira as he searches high and low for the lyrics to a nursury rhyme his mother used to sing when he was a child. He abandoned his mother as a teenager, and he has found out she has since died, so he cannot ask her himself. The past and the present become contingent as Akira recounts events related to his obsession with the rhyme, a red ball, and his relationship with his mother.

The first thing to note is that in this anthology, instead of just subtitling the Japanese dialogue for the French audiences, a French narrator was added over the film; so instead of listening to any dialogue the film is told like a story, with one voice for all the characters. I had originally seen the film in it's original language with English subtitles, devoid of the French narration, so it was interesting to compare the two. The French version spells things out a little more, as the narration relies on one omnipotent story teller instead of what's actually happening in the story. This can be a good or bad thing, depending on your outlook. I prefer the original method, as it allows the events to unfold slowly, and draws more upon the actual emotional implications of what's happening in order to tell the story, whereas the French narration more or less straight up just tells the story (as opposed to the original version showing it). Regardless of how it's watched, one thing doesn't change, and that's Terayama's amazing symbolic and surreal images.

Above everything else, the color red is utterly dominant in the film, taking prominence in every single frame, and helping to elaborate the emotionally important elements of whatever memory or event is on screen; an hair comb, Akira's mothers dress, a window, a ball. Terayama's trademark color filters are also on display, saturating, desaturating, or dividing the frame into brilliant surreal colors that add an air of the fantastique to events that are already bizarre. There is also a careful rhythm in the film; between the plotting, the images, and J.A. Seazer's brilliant score-- the film begins slowly and builds in tempo until it literally climaxes (although it's more like an orgasm, or a wet dream) with a bizarre surreal dream that is both all encompassing of the events leading up to it and utterly confusing, revealing as many answers as it begs questions.

But such is the nature of a Terayama film, and this is definitely that. It works as a sort of microcosm of the themes that Terayama would explore again and again throughout his career, whether it be in film, photography, poetry, or theater. Two very dominant traits that are ever-present throughout Terayama's oeuvre relate to family dynamics; the father of the protagonist (who is generally male, as most of Terayama's work is at least vaguely auto-biographical) is always absent, and the mother is controlling and manipulative. The film is also very similar to Terayama's 1974 feature Pastoral: To Die in the Country. It explores similar themes in a similar location in a similar method, so it's almost safe to view Grass Labyrinth as a sequel or continuation.

The third, and final, segment of the film is Walerian Borowczyk's The Cabinet. It tells the tale of a lonely upper class man at night who, fearing the onset of sadness, decides to go to the theater and pick up a whore for the entire night so he doesn't have to sleep alone. He meets a woman and gets her to agree to spend the entire night with him, instead of the normal half hour or so. He heads back to her apartment and makes love with her, afterward manipulating her into telling of her first time. Eventually he realizes that somebody else is in the room...

A period piece that is beautifully lit, Borowczyk's segment is decorated with details; something that Borowczyk carries off with ease. His camera gently glides from the couple making love to the border of a wooden bead frame, and this fetishistic eye helps to heighten the elegant, erotic tension. While ostensibly both Jaeckin and Borowczyk work within upper class eroticism, they handle it remarkably differently. Jaeckin's is more loose and glossy, like a magazine ad, whereas Borowczyk's is direct and studied, allowing for a more subtle atmosphere to develop in order to enhance the sexuality.

Early in the short, as the man is visiting the theater cum bordello, Borowcyzk shows his genuine skill in directing chaos, carefully allowing enough details to create a sensual atmosphere that will introduce the rest of the events on screen. It's interesting, however, that the main plot of the story ends on a melancholy note, then once again returns to the chaos that began the film. It's creates an emotional dichotomy; we see that both of our main characters have been, for lack of a better word, touched, yet both return to the same routine the next night.

As a whole, Private Collections is pretty disconnected. There are really no connections between any of the shorts outside of the fact that they all include sexuality as a primary plot progression. The films all stand up fairly well on their own, but there's absolutely nothing that makes them better viewed within the context of the anthology. Not that I'm complaining, I happen to be a pretty big fan of all the directors involved here, so to see them together is a very nice thing, even if the films don't interact with each other at all.

I guess one thing postive I could say about the anthology context would be that it serves to introduce core themes and ideas between all three directors oeuvres. Jaeckin regularly makes glossy softcore erotica that is almost always style over subtsance, Terayama creates enigmatic, memory-ridden 'trips' that rely regularly on sexuality to progress, and Borowczyk works mainly in period erotica pieces with a careful eye for detail. If you want an hour and forty minute introduction to three of the best figures working in the erotic in the 70s, this wouldn't be the worst place to start.

WIFE COLLECTOR (HISAYASU SATO, 1985)

2007-07-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

aka Hitozuma Collector, aka Decaying Town

Wife Collector was director Hisayasu Sato's third feature film, made in 1985. It follows the actions of a disgruntled taxi driver who regularly rapes his clients, videotaping the act. One of his victims, whom he has for some reason developed a sort of attachment to (partly due to the physical remains of the act; the evidence being the bite mark left on his shoulder), can no longer enjoy sex with her husband. Instead she takes to the streets and offers her body to whoever is willing, not charging anything. The woman's younger sister, who lives with her, has discovered all this and documented it with photographs that she eventually reveals to her sister and sister's husband, before she decides to meet with the taxi driver herself.

Not half as developed as many of Sato's later films, seeds of his themes and obsessions are still present. The dysfunctional family unit, represented by the two sisters and the older sister's husband is vaguely prominent, with no sense of unity existing between them. The taxi driver is very isolated in his own world, another characteristic that remains prevalent throughout Sato's oeuvre. The final key element that would pop up again and again in Sato's work is the camera; both the camera that the little sister uses to distance herself from (and eventually accept) what her sister has gone through, and the video camera that the taxi driver uses to document his crimes.

The film, for the most part, is a better than average ero-guro pink film, but the characters aren't developed enough to allow Sato's themes to become prevalent-- the audience gets the impression that the abundance of rape is more of a symbol for the disconnection and apathy that is present in these characters lives, but we don't understand the characters enough for this to approach anything beyond a level of shock. This is unfortunate, because looking back it's very obvious that Sato is a more than capable director when it comes to using shock for more intellectual purposes.

Which is why the film remains interesting, above being an above average genre flick-- there is evidence here of what Sato would soon become, and for someone like me who enjoys seeing progression in an artists work, every step of the way is fascinating, especially when each step manages to grow out of the former step. Overall, the movie is by no means remarkable, but definitely worth watching, especially for those with an interest in Sato.

RARE FILM WISH LIST

2007-07-01T19:45:00.000-07:00

I am looking for the following films; if anybody has any of them I would be more than willing to offer other rare films in return as a trade. Please contact me at mikekitchell(at)gmail(dot)com if you can help me out in any way.

ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET (AND RELATED):
Les Gommes (The Erasers) / Lucien Deroisy & Rene Micha / 1969
In the Labyrinth / Derek Martinus / 1976
La Jalousie / Klaus Kieschner / 1973 (Television allemande)
Les deux chambres distantes et/ou les deux chambres discretes / Kunihiko Nakagawa / 1975
La plage a distance / Kunihiko Nakagawa / 1977
La Chambre secrete / J. F. Urrusti / 1978
In the Labyrinthe / Robert Lrikala / 1962

ALBERTO CAVALLONE:
La Salamandre / Alberto Cavallone / 1969
Maldoror / Alberto Cavallone / 1977
Blow Job / Alberto Cavallone / 1980

FRANS ZWARTJES:
Eating / Frans Zwartjes / 1969
Achter je muren / Frans Zwartjes / 1970
It's Me / Frans Zwartjes / 1976
In extremo / Frans Zwartjes / 1981
Medea / Frans Zwartjes / ????

VARIOUS:
In the Highest of Skies (Nel più alto dei cieli) / Silvano Agosti / 1977
Hyper Auto Erotic Art / Walerian Borowczyk / 1981
Grotesque Perverted Slaughter (Gendai ryoki sei-hanzai) / Giichi Nishihara / 1976
Time of Wickedness (Ma no toki) / Yasuo Furuhata / 1985
Les Rendez-Vous En Foret / Alain Fleischer / 1972
Hu-Man / Jerome Laperrousaz / 1975
Story of I / Jo Anne Kaplan / 1997
Faceless Things (Eolgul eopnun geotdul) / Kim Kyung-Mook / 2005
Pornographie chez madame Saint-Claud / Norbert Terry / 1975
Piege / Jacques Baratier / 1968
L.A. Plays Itself / Fred Halsted / 1972
Phantasmes aka The Seduction of Amy / Jean Rollin / 1975 FRENCH VERSION
The Claw of Horus / Jean Rollin / 1990
Spatiodynamisme / Tinto Brass & Nicolas Schoeffer / 1958
Désirs et perversions / Jean-Pierre Bouyxou / 1977
Amours collectives / Jean-Pierre Bouyxou / 1976
Sortez vos culs de ma commode / Jean-Pierre Bouyxou / 1972
Graphyty / Jean-Pierre Bouyxou / 1969
Anarchie, L' / Jean-Pierre Bouyxou / 1967
Paris erotika (Paris Ooh-La-La!) / José Bénazéraf / 1964
L'Enfer sur la Plage (Hell on the Beach) / José Bénazéraf / 1965
Models International / Jacques Scandelari & José Bénazéraf / 1966

Any Roland Lethem other than THE BLOODTHIRSTY FAIRY (1968).

Anything by Hisayasu Sato that I don't have

ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF TITLES

2007-07-01T18:26:00.001-07:00

Since it's difficult to go through the archives here, I've decided to build an index of the titles reviewed and any articles. I will be linking this post from the side bar for easy access.

ESOTIKA CLASSICKS:
01 - LUCIFER RISING (KENNETH ANGER, 1972)
02 - INSTITUTE BENJAMENTA (STEPHEN & TIMOTHY QUAY, 1995)

REVIEWS:
ANIMA PERSA (DINO RISI, 1977)
ARREBATO (IVAN ZULUETA, 1979)
THE BEDROOM (HISAYASU SATO, 1992)
LA BELLE CAPTIVE (ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, 1983)
CANNIBAL (MARIAN DORA, 2005)
THE CITY WITHOUT WINDOWS (JULIEN FONFREDE & KARIM HUSSAIN, 2002)
DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (HARRY KUMEL, 1971)
DAY-DREAM (TETSUJI TAKECHI, 1964)
THE DEAD MAN (PEGGY AHWESH & KEITH SANBORN, 1987)
DELIRIUM (RENATO POLSELLI, 1972)
DON'T DELIVER US FROM EVIL (JOEL SERIA, 1971)
DEVIATION (JOSE LARRAZ, 1971)
DIRTY MARIA (TAKAHISA ZEZE, 1998)
DUELLE (JACQUES RIVETTE, 1976)
THE EMBRYO HUNTS IN SECRET (KOJI WAKAMATSU, 1966)
L'ETREINTE (PAUL COLLET & PIERRE DROUOT, 1969)
EXHIBITION II (JEAN-FRANCOIS DAVY, 1978)
FATA MORGANA (VICENTE ARANDA, 1965)
FOOTPRINTS (LUIGI BAZZONI, 1975)
THE FRUITS OF PASSION (SHUJI TERAYAMA, 1981)
FRUSTRATION (JOSE BENAZERAF, 1971)
FUSES (CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN, 1967)
LA GEMELLA EROTICA (ALBERTO CAVALLONE, 1980)
GEMIDOS DE PLACER (JESS FRANCO, 1982)
HOUR OF THE WOLF (INGMAR BERGMAN, 1968)
I WAS A TEENAGE ZABBADOING (CARL ANDERSEN, 1988)
INLAND EMPIRE (DAVID LYNCH, 2006)
KILLING CAR (JEAN ROLLIN, 1993)
LANDSCAPE SUICIDE (JAMES BENNING, 1986)
LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET (ROGER WATKINS, 1977)
LEO ES PARDO (IVAN ZULUETA, 1976)
THE LICKERISH QUARTET (RADLEY METZGER, 1970)
LIVING (FRANS ZWARTJES, 1971)
LOFT (KIYOSHI KUROSAWA, 2005
LOST IN NEW YORK (JEAN ROLLIN, 1989)
LOST PARADISE (MASAMI AKITA, 1990)
MACUMBA SEXUAL (JESS FRANCO, 1983)
MIDNIGHT HEAT (ROGER WATKINS, 1983)
PRIVATE COLLECTIONS (JUST JAECKIN, SHUJI TERAYAMA, and WALERIAN BOROWCYZK, 1979)
RAFURESHIA (HISAYASU SATO, 1995)
THE REINCARNATION OF ISABEL (RENATO POLSELLI, 1973)
REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (JEAN ROLLIN, 1973)
LA ROSE DE FER (JEAN ROLLIN, 1973)
SATAN BOUCHE UN COIN (JEAN-PIERRE BOUYXOU, 1968)
SLOW SLIDINGS OF PLEASURE (ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, 1974)
SOMBRE (PHILIPPE GRANDRIEUX, 1998)
STRANGE CIRCUS (SION SONO, 2005)
SURVEY MAP OF A PARADISE LOST (HISAYASU SATO, 1988)
THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT (ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI, 1971)
THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS (JONAS MIDDLETON, 1976)
DER TODESKING (JORG BUTTGEREIT, 1989)
TRAITEMENT DE CHOC (ALAIN JESSUA, 1973)
VISIONS OF SUFFERING (ANDREY ISKANOV, 2006)
WIFE COLLECTOR (HISAYASU SATO, 1985)

ARTICLES:
31 FILMS THAT GIVE [ME] THE WILLIES
A COMPARISON BETWEEN "THE DESTROYED ROOM" AND LA CHAMBRE
EURO-TRASH AESTHETICS & THE IMPORTANCE OF THE IGNORED
INTERVIEW WITH RENATO POLSELLI (BY JAY SLATER)
PRIVATE AND PUBLIC VIEWING SPACES

I have also added a link in the sidebar to my screening log.

DUELLE (UNE QUARANTAINE), (JACQUES RIVETTE, 1976)

2007-06-25T22:56:00.000-07:00

"I see what I weave only from behind, never from the front." A line spoken by Pierrot in the middle of Rivette's film sums up the narrative structure of the 1976 film. We, as viewers, are introduced into events that have already been set forth, and we're unaware of any motivation or reasoning, and it's very frustrating. Things are happening, very distinct, mystical things, and we as viewers can come up with absolutely no explanations.

Duelle tells the story of the daughter of the moon, Leni, and the daughter of the sun, Viva, and they're battle to try to extend their visiting time, in the human world, to a period of more than forty days. The key to their goal lies within a mysterious jewel that, for reasons unknown to the audience, lies within Pierrots hands. We follow as the goddesses manipulate other character in attempts to achieve their goals, having just caught up to the location of the stone at the end of their forty days. And while trying to get the jewel themselves, they also have to face each other, and it is this battle that constructs the heart of the film.

Luckily for the viewer, Pierrots line of dialogue quoted above does come to fruition; as the film unfolds more details become clear. Naturally, not everything is revealed, but this is Rivette's secret; he gives us enough information (eventually) to actually invest an interest the events on screen, and his refusal to explain everything forces us to retain this investment, even when the film is over. It's a very mystical concept for the construction of a film, and it ends up working far better than I had expected at the beginning of the film, which in a drowsy viewing state was somewhat tedious. And in this case, perseverance more than pays off.

According to several online sources, the film was the first in a planned four film series all telling the story of the two goddesses after this stone. Each film was supposed to approach the story with a deconstruction of a genre, with this film modeled after the film noir and the following film, Noirot, being inspired by pirate movies. The third and fourth films never were made due to a nervous breakdown Rivette suffered three days into shooting. And while the information is contextually interesting, the film is successful enough on its own.

Rivette also apparently screened Val Lewton & Mark Robson's The Seventh Victim for his actors and actresses before the film began shooting. The film is a personal favorite of mine, and is what lead to me seeking this film out. The influence of the Lewton film is very evident not only in the remarkably glamorous outfits and movements of the two goddesses, but also in the deliberate sense of detachment which is present when either of the goddesses has to kill a victim. It's also present in the manipulation; in Lewton's film the manipulation serves to obscure the reality of the satanic cult, and in Rivette's film it is used to help the goddesses achieve their goal of getting the jewel.

One of the most wonderful things about the film is the atmosphere it creates, set in a world that is virtually abandoned by all except for the five primary characters. The film also feels like it takes place in a permanent twilight, which no doubt has an influence over the English title of the film, Twilight. The interiors of the film are also primarily set in a dance hall or a hotel, both locations that recall settings of many film noir films. But the influence is perfectly suited in this case, as the locations in their emptiness add to the utter mysticism that the film retains. In fact, the film also calls to mind Harry Kumel's brilliant Daughters of Darkness, which also features protagonists in glamorous outfits that recall silent films, and also has mystical events occurring within a hotel.

Another instance worth noting is the films somewhat bizarre use of sound. All of the music that occurs during the film is indeed diegetic, but often plays as non-diegetic. What I mean by that is often the pianist that is providing the music for whatever scene is being played out is actually on the screen, with none of the characters interacting with them. It's obviously pure experiment, but this pays off because it adds to the aforementioned sense of atmosphere and displacement. A pivotal "battle" scene near the end of the film between Lucie (Pierrot's brother) and Viva also calls to mind Jean Rollin's work, with it's highly apathetic, choreographed movements and utter lack of music.

Despite these seemingly very cinematic points, the film avoids deconstructing a genre in the way that Godard deconstructs the spy film in Alphaville; Rivette's film does not come off and over-analytical and intentional, rather it is a film that, like the events that happen within it, is itself mystical. While the film is very very dense and thought-provoking, it's not an intellectual film in the classical sense of the term. An intellectual reading of the film would fall flat, because, as I mentioned before, there are not enough answers that would provide an intellectual context for certain scenes. Rather, the scenes exists and work without an explanation because of the mystical approach Rivette takes.

I suppose I should clarify that by "mystical" I mean to imply that it has a "spiritual reality" that isn't immediately clear to the mind or the senses. As I've mentioned before, there are many fantastic events that occur on the film that have virtually no explanation, but due to the film existing in this sort of mystical state, it is perfectly coherent, and these scenes simply add to the intensity and tone. In fact, I'm sure that is why the film is often relegated to the ghetto as a minor film; Rivette follows all the "rules" of le fantastique, whereas his major films are all clearly Nouvelle Vague arthouse films. This is a more clearcut example of the kinds of films I'm prone to visiting here, an arthouse fantasy film. It draws from classic genre films as much as it does from the canonized arthouse. And it's something that I really appreciate.

FOOTPRINTS (LUIGI BAZZONI, 1975)

2007-06-20T14:29:00.001-07:00

aka Le Orme

Most English speaking audiences are primarily familiar with Luigi Bazzoni from his 1971 Giallo film, The Fifth Cord. While I'm not a huge fan of that film itself (outside of a few particular sequences), I have always thought that it was one of the most beautifully shot gialli films made, featuring beautiful tracking shots and an amazing use of colors. Footprints, which was Luigi Bazzoni's next film, made four years later, once again was lens by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro, and is just as beautiful, but luckily, far more interesting.

The film begins with a dream that Alice (Florinda Bolkan, who always has the lead role in Fulci's 1971 gialli Lizard in a Woman's Skin) has, which follows a man being abandoned on the moon only to die out of exasperation. She wakes up and quickly realizes that she has lost two days time-- she thinks it is only Tuesday, but in actuality it's Thursday. Confused about how she could have slept for such a long time, she begins to find clues around her beautifully lavish apartment that would indicate she may not have actually slept through the days. The biggest clue she finds is a postcard with the text "Garma Hotel" on the back. In an attempt to figure out what has happened to her lost time, she travels to Garma and checks into the hotel that appeared on her postcard.

Once there she encounters many characters who seem to recognize her, and as she puts the pieces together she has no idea who to trust. The dream that opens the film is apparently, in Alice's mind, a film she once saw long ago, but she never saw the ending as the film frightened her too much. Haunted by the film and her utter confusion, she strives to come to a realization of what's happening, and what has happened.

Once the character of Alice arrives on the island, she is utterly alone. The hotel she stays in is largely empty except for a few guests, and the epic walls and staircases help to perfectly emphasize her loneliness. It also contributes to the paranoid mood that permeates almost every scene. In fact, the combination of a large hotel and amnesia immediate draws to mind Alain Resnais' brilliant Last Year at Marienbad which this film somewhat resembles.

Both films feature female protagonists whose past is called under examination by a man who claims to have shared a relationship with them, and both deal with the idea of depersonalization and memory, in a very cyclic, enigmatic way. Both end in a climax that leaves the viewer questioning the events that have been depicted on screen, and their validity. The film also recalls Alain Robbe-Grillet's L'Immortelle with the endless wandering of the protagonist, searching for something that is well out of their reach. However, Footprints isn't quite as intellectually accomplished as these films, relying somewhat more on surface level details than any sort of intellectual, or even emotional, core. However, one major difference between the two films and Footprints is the fact that this film was shot in brilliant colors, and compositions that perfectly balance Alice's loneliness with large, structured images, placing Alice even smaller in the frame, helping to create the psychological framework that is obviously present.

What makes the film most successful is it's combination of isolation and beautiful cinematography in the creation of atmosphere. Like I've already mentioned, framing Alice against much larger, empty structures helps to not only emphasize her aloofness, but also create a dreamy mood that makes all of the events, despite how slightly surreal they might seem, work.

Despite many of it's strong points, Footprints still falls prey to a general trope of the psychological thriller; Alice's frustration with her inadequacy and confusion results in more of a sense of irritated-ness rather than true pain. Most of her frustration is taken out on a young girl who is a key element in helping her cull an idea of her missing time. But regardless, the fantastic elements of the film make up for this slight and overall the film is a rewarding experience.

REQUIEM FOR A VAMPIRE (JEAN ROLLIN, 1973)

2007-06-20T14:24:00.000-07:00

Jean Rollin has remarked that he wrote the script for Requiem for a Vampire in three days. He started with images- two clowns being chased, a woman playing a piano in a field, and the went from there. His approach to writing the script was similar to that of the surrealists in their methods of automatic writing; he just jumped from image to image without censoring his subconscious. Even while shooting, he refused to change anything from his original script, it had come out of his head that way so he insisted on keeping it that way.

Somewhat surprisingly, it turned out fantastic (and not only in the fantastique way). The plot follows two beautiful young girls as they escape from something unknown, and fall into the clutches of a renegade group of individuals protecting the last vampire. There is little to no dialogue for the first hour of the film, another factor that Rollin was very proud of. It's very fast paced, and never really drags, all the while remaining beautiful, mysterious, and a tad melancholic.

I say melancholic because the last vampire himself has accepted the fact that his legacy will soon be over. He tells Marie (played by the always great Marie-Pierre Castel) that he has a secret for her, and his secret is that he will soon die. He admits this fact with a noble sense of defeat. His followers are beastly, except for a woman who plays the piano; she accepts her fate to guard the tomb, suffering the defeat far more heavily than the last vampire himself.

The film, aside from handling the randomly-written screenplay quite congruously, handles quick mood changes very admirably. The film jumps from scenes of playfulness (Michelle taunting the man with her nude body) to tenderness (Maraie sacrificing her virginity in order to save herself from the vampires) to terror (the woman vampire stalking up the stairs) and throughout remains consistent, overall very dreamy.

Aside from the mood, music is more present than in almost any other Rollin feature to date. Instead of the normal ghostly silence that generally haunts most of Rollin's films, almost every scene is backed by Pierre Raph's wonderfully extensive score. In the same way the film itself changes moods rapidly, as does the soundtrack, ranging from psych-rock to piano ballads to Gothic orchestrations.

The film also briefly touches upon the idea of love, as is a regular occurrence throughout Rollin's filmography. The two girls who have run away together love each other with an intense childish naivety; they are, and will always be, best friends. It's not a sexual love, despite a scene earlier in the film where the two playfully fondle each others breasts in bed, it's something far more pure. And, very surprisingly, the girls manage to leave the events while still in their state of naivety, despite having been violated (either by a penis as in Marie's case, or by the vampires bloodsucking, like Michelle).

Overall the film is a very playful instance of Rollin's amazing career, and is one of his best works. It is beautifully shot, with most of the beauty radiating from the two girls, who Rollin finds beautiful ways to frame over and over again. While not as intellectually stimulating as many of Rollin's other films, it's still a remarkable aesthetic experience and carries a naivety of cinema that Rollin himself loved.

THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT (ANDRZEJ ZULAWSKI, 1971)

2007-06-15T22:27:00.001-07:00

The Third Part of the Night was the first film Andrzej Zulawski ever made, and, throughout his troubled career, it's one of his only films that has been critically acclaimed, at least in his homeland of Poland where it won an award for Best Debut Film at the Polish Film Festival.

Ostensibly a film about the German occupation of Poland during World War II, Zulawski takes a treatment written by his father (based on his personal experiences) and turns it into an emotionally loaded trip through the guilt of a young man, Michael, who has witnessed the death of his wife and child, himself escaping. He escapes from the countryside where the incident has occurred, and while working for an opposing force barely escapes death as he runs up a staircase (a key image in the Zulawski filmography) and hides while a man who resembles him gets gunned down instead. Fleeing into the room of the wife of the man who has just taken his place, he comes to a realization that she almost perfectly resembles his own now dead wife. Throughout the rest of the film the man is constantly battling his own ideas in regards to love, especially a difference between the idea of love as self-sacrifice (as in, the high point of love is loving somebody else), and love as self-preservation (having somebody love you, having a child).

Zulawski, above all, is a filmmaker who works best in depicting extreme emotions, and his premiere film is no exception. While it isn't as developed in terms of his specific techniques as his later films, from the opening sequence which depicts the death of Michal's wife, Zulawski's hand held camera is present. Zulawski approaches cinema very directly, forcing the viewer, with his cinematographers floating camera, to not witness the events occurring on screen from a stable, fixed position. The camera moves at an intense speed, perfectly reflecting the events and the emotional turmoil that's present in his story.

The film is also decked out in fantastic and apocalyptic images, visually representative of the direction the rest of the directors career would take. Winding staircases leading upward serve as a device used by the characters to distance themselves from the 'void' that they are trying to escape, or in some cases, escape into. Characters are often framed within the frame, placing an emphasis and separation on what is generally a disparate, but relative, image. At the emotional climax of the film the viewer finds Michal running down an endless hallway, encountering room after room of nude, dead representations of himself and his wife. The scene recalls a scene in Jose Benazeraf's Frustration (made the same year as Zulawski's film, but several countries away) as Janine Reynaud's character runs down a hallway encountering room after room of variations on her sister and sister's husband fornicating. The scenes work in the same way in both films, they establish a level of instability and a built up frustration that is emphasized by the endless, inescapable repetition.

The death scenes in the film are also slightly abstracted, portrayed with a level of spurting blood that could match that of a slasher flick from the early 80s. But this is not mere titillation in the same way the overabundance of blood and gore in a slasher movie is, rather, in conjunction with Zulawski's extreme emotions, the extreme blood and gore really emphasizes the weight of the situation. For example, the fantastic element (in this case the over- exaggeration of blood and gore) helps to create a more potent emotional response, which, as Zulawski makes very emotional films, is absolutely coherent within the structure of his films. The blood and gore is not only literal, it's also utterly symbolic of Michal's tense, unsure responses to the world around him after his experiences.

Overall the film is not as developed as some of Zulawski's later works (namely the essential Possession and The Most Important Thing is Love), but it remains a very strong premiere film that displays the characteristics of cinema itself that it's director would go on to develop. It is also one of the most powerful war films that I've ever seen at least, avoiding blanket sentimentality by channeling this presumed emotional response into a complex love story and more universal issues.

GEMIDOS DE PLACER (JESS FRANCO, 1982)

2007-06-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

Gemidos de Placer is a film Franco made during his Golden Period, being a stage of his career in which he had returned to Spain to make films, and for the first time in his career was more or less free to make the exact films he wanted. This unfortunately often weakened his budget to an amount even less than he was accustomed to, but despite financial short comings it was a period of wildly personal, poetic films for Jess.

The film takes its inspiration from Philosophy in the Boudoir, a short work written by the Marquis de Sade whose themes Franco returned to time and time again throughout his long, still going career. The film takes place in a single night, from dusk to dawn, with only five characters taking part in the entire film. From what I can gather^[1], Antonio (Antonio Mayans) brings his friend Julia (Franco's muse, Lina Romay) to his house for a night of debauched sex. Also Antonio's wife Martine has just returned to the house from a mental institution. Eventually Antonio reveals that he intends to drive Martine back to the institution, but throughout a night of sex (lots of sex), and the sexually fueled death of Marta, a sort of maid at the villa, things begin to change. Julia and Martine develop a close relationship, and at the end of the film they take their own actions against Antonio.

The plot is pure Franco, distinctively drawing a parallel between eroticism and death. Virtually nothing happens in the film except for extended sex scenes, yet the film rises above being pure, trite, erotica. To begin with, Franco takes a very Materialist/Structuralist approach to the actual structure of the film. The film is made up of only twenty segments, that is twenty takes without cuts, which if you divide the length of the film (~82 minutes) by twenty, you quickly realize that this means each shot is approximately four minutes in length. The camera lingers on the corporeal acts, using focus to draw attention to inanimate objects in the room, creating an intensely erotic rhythm to the film. The extended shots never get boring; by demonstrating a very careful understanding of composition and depth of field, the viewers eyes never stop moving, taking in the pure beauty of the scenes that Franco has created.

And this film is indeed one of Franco's most utterly beautiful. Even on the apparently shoe-string budget he was on, Franco uses every inch of the space his characters in habit-- the actors and actresses move in such a deliberate way it resembles choreography, moving around the frame which is always built upon the sexual act. Franco has his actors and actresses actually work with their surroundings, the villa itself becoming an all important sixth character in Franco's drama.

In fact, while I compared the technical intent to a simplified Materialist/Structural film earlier, Gemidos de Placer shares more in common with the more poetic strain of the avant-garde, even calling to mind such early canonical greats such as Maya Deren (refer to the seemingly choreographic movement of the characters, the inherent eroticism built out of material objects), but divorced of symbolism outside of anything but the erotic rhythm.

Working greatly with the rhythmic camera and characters themselves, brilliant guitar movement mingles with the action on screen, playing, as usual in a Franco film, an all important role in helping to develop the emotional impact of the film. And don't get me wrong, that is what remains most important here; even through my lack of understanding of the dialogue, the film conveys an extreme sense of emotion, which, I imagine, is why many Franco fanatics claim it as one of his best works.

In fact, what is easily the best scene of the movie comes shortly after the murder of Marta, as Julia desperately writhes and wriggles on a bed while the sun in rising in a window behind her (invoking a key image in Franco's oeuvre). The score of the film swells and the way that the rising sun hits her body as she goes through extreme sexual motions is hypnotic, and possibly the most beautiful thing that I've ever seen in a Franco film. The movement of the characters and camera, the lighting, the music, and the rhythm throughout all of this serves to create such an intense emotional tension that one cannot help but be utterly moved.

However, despite all this brilliance and emotional greatness, the unending sex-scenes do get somewhat tedious, as simulated sex scenes honestly take up more than 3/4s of the films runtime. It may be a totally personal response, as the film definitely never breaks the dreamlike atmosphere that it creates, but my lack of understanding of the dialogue made me occasionally lose interest. I wouldn't consider it a shortcoming of the film itself, as it is necessary in order to maintain the slow rhythm, but occasionally one wishes that something else would happen.

Despite it's flaws, Gemidos de Placer remains a major, key film in the Franco canon, expertly handling the themes of love, sex, and death that Franco has dealt with time and time again in his filmography It also demonstrates that the director who is very often referred to as a hack in terms of techniques actually is very adept at handling all the elements that make film as a medium the amazing thing that it is. If you can get past the fact that the film consists of virtually nothing but sex and focus on what Franco surrounds all of the sex with, I can guarantee a fully rewarding, affecting experience.

^[1]The version of the film I saw was in the original Spanish language without any subtitles, so I'm taking this plot from the viewing of the film and an auto-translation of the Italian Wikipedia Page.

DAY-DREAM (TETSUJI TAKECHI, 1964)

2007-06-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

aka Hakujitsumu

Day-Dream is an early example of a pinku film from Japan. The genre, throughout its history, has attained a status as an example of a commercially viable venue for more experimental and counter-culture 'art house' fare under the guise of what in the west would be viewed as mere exploitation. As in any genre of film, there are examples of the genre that stand out as excellent, as well as examples that are mere exploitation without much artistic merit; Day-Dream being an example of the former. In fact, the film shares far more in common with the Japanese New Wave films that were being produced around the same time as it does the lesser examples of the pinku film.

Cheiko is a beautiful woman who arrives at a dentist office waiting room where Kurahashi, a young adult male, is already waiting. The two get called into the 'operating' room, and it becomes apparent that Cheiko is very uncomfortable with dentistry. As Kurahashi is given an injection to put him under so the doctor can remove a cavity, he sees the dentist and the nurse vampirize Cheiko, ripping her top off and biting her neck. The remainder of the film is depicted as Kurahashi's reverie, or day dream, as he dreams/fantasizes about Cheiko in a number of uncomfortable sexual situations, generally related to S/M.

The plot is fairly simple, but the approach taken is what makes the film unique. To begin with, Kurahashi seems to place himself in his day dream as a mere voyeur to the situations which Cheiko endures, as opposed to an active participant. Not only that, but he also views himself as an impotent hero for the first two- thirds of the film, utterly filled with desire for Cheiko but unable to save her from the demonized man who is causing her pain and suffering. The fact that he imagines himself as a voyeur, and as such is constantly depicted actually watching Cheiko's sexual misadventures, marks the film as decisively different than plain exploitation. While a woman is being sexually degraded on screen, Kurahashi's voyeurism calls attention to the fact that we, as viewers are simple voyeurs as well, imposing the question of why, exactly, are we watching this degradation.

This divide immediately causes a sense of the uncomfortable, as like Kurahashi, the viewer is impotent in'saving' the fictional character of Cheiko. We are constantly exposed to her pain and suffering, but we, like Kurahashi, can do absolutely nothing. It's a quite visceral reaction that, as mentioned, distances any sense of mere exploitation.

With the final third of the day dream, Kurahashi seems to rebel against this repression, and in an act that represents a sexual climax, stabs Cheiko to death in the middle of the street, where are large number of civilians pay absolutely no attention. Even with his desperate act, performed more out of reaction than any actual emotions towards Cheiko, he remains impotent, unable to change the world around him.

The film itself is steadily paced and features a very small amount of on-screen sex, especially in comparison to other pinku films. Cheiko is more or less terrified throughout all of her screen time, her terror climaxes in a delightfully surreal series of events that occur in an empty department store in the dead of night.

The music itself is minimal, occasionally erupting in a sort of avant-garde buzzing that helps to emphasize the remarkable psychological states occurring within the characters. As Kurahashi desperately pounds on a glass window where he watches Cheiko be tied up and electrocuted, the score swells to an emotional high as he collapses to the ground, unable to cope with his impotence.

Interestingly enough, while the film itself features very minimal nudity and on screen sex, when producer Joseph Green imported the film for domestic distribution he shot a number of inserts (in the same way Radley Metzger shot additional 'risque' scenes to spice up European films he had imported for Audubon Films) in an abstract, minimal environment featuring a number of fully nude men and women wearing grotesque masks. While the scenes were obviously just shot to up the nudity quotient and help sell the film to American audiences, they serve as an odd sort of representation of the subconscious of various characters, which is even more interesting to think about as the entirety of Kurahashi's day dream itself also serves to represent this. Most of the added scenes are incorporated fairly well, but there are a few instances where the looped soundtrack is obvious and the tension that is apparent in the original film is interrupted.

Outside of a single scene that was shot in color to heighten it's emotional impact (a la the Japanese New Wave films of Nagisa Oshima and much of Koji Wakamatsu's work), the film isn't remarkably impressive from a technical level. The cinematography is stark black and white, carefully balancing the white of skin against the black background of night. But the technicalities are not what's important here, what remains important about this film is the emotional impact of the events, and the aforementioned conflict of interests (sexual titillation versus the implied impotence of being a voyeur) serve to wonderfully heighten the emotional impact.

As a bizarre ending to the film, the camera reveals the bite marks left from the dentist still present on Cheiko's neck, very obviously outside of the context of Kurahashi's day dream; the camera pans up, and Cheiko grins widely before driving off. This ending seems to signify that it was actually Cheiko who was day dreaming, but that undermines the aforementioned emotional impact and significance of the film and instead subverts the ideas of the anonymous woman's response to the sexual degradation.

While the film is very interesting and entirely worth watching, it's not quite as impressive as the pinku films of Koji Wakamatsu, or much later down the line, Hisayasu Sato. Regardless, it's a worthwhile psycho- sexual story that remains very entertaining.

LA GEMELLA EROTICA (ALBERTO CAVALLONE, 1980)

2007-06-12T01:36:00.000-07:00

aka Erotic Twin, aka Due gocce d'acqua

Alberto Cavallone is a virtually unknown director who created a handful of incredibly potent films between 1969 and 1983. His work is (somewhat) notoriously political and nihilistic; he seems to approach his films as conduits for his extreme, somewhat anarchic ideas, and his films are often incredibly difficult and enigmatic. Eventually, according to one of the only English language articles on the director (which is available here), he ended up directing "gritty underground porn." Within the context of what I know of his filmography, La Gemella Erotica is somewhat of an anomaly.

The plot, at least what I can gather of it (it should be noted that the copy of the film I watched was in Italian language without any English subtitles, and I have virtually no comprehension of Italian), revolves around a psychiatrist named Tony and two identical twin sisters, Norma and Mary. Norma and Mary are apparently very different from each other, to the point of conflict. Mary ends up blackmailing Norma, and Tony (who is either married to or in a relationship with Norma) is somewhat involved, as it would seem that Tony is occasionally seeing Mary as a patient in his office. Revelations near the end of the film suggest a far more complex situation, and Mary's lover ends up in a position to kill. There is also a very brief subplot involving another of Tony's patient's who ends up raping and killing a woman before regressing into utter insanity.

The plot description probably sounds fairly thin and convoluted, and while I'm sure part of the reason for this is due to my lack of comprehension of the dialogue, several sources also suggest that Cavallone ending up leaving the film in the middle of production, with notorious hack Luigi Cozzi taking over. However, I cannot verify this, as all of the credits on the film itself seem to indicate that it was Cavallone through and through.

While most of the film plays out like a somewhat generic erotic thriller (the subgenre that became so popular throughout the 80s), elements of the film stand out as being coherent within my understanding of the framework of Cavallone's oeuvre. To begin, Cavallone's films have a very unique editing style that is comparable to nothing that I've seen before in cinema. La Gemella Erotica holds up that editing style for about a third of the movie, traces of it popping up periodically. The style is a sort of subversion of the commercial use of the 'cut,' juxtaposing jarring images next to each other to create a mental and emotionally state that is utterly unstable. It is most evident in the film while the rapist is in Tony's office apparently daydreaming a fantasy of what ends up becoming reality, and later in the film when one of the sister's emotional state begins to fracture.

The camera work is also fairly interesting, combining a subjective hand held camera with a more stable objective shooting style, also occasionally sprinkled with more objective hand held camera work. If this dynamic style of cinematography and editing had been held up throughout the entire film (like it is in other films of Cavallone) that would have made at least the visual rhythms of the film more interesting. As it stands, the movie occasionally ventures into rather flat and drawn out periods which play, as mentioned before, like a generic erotic thriller.

Something very irritating about the film is a large majority of the music. It sounds exactly like you would expect a piece of softcore erotica from 1980 would sound like, and often throughout the film, especially during the ending, it's completely distracting and misplaced. Not all of the music cues are awful and mismatched, but enough that it warrants noting. As it stands, in my position of some ignorance towards the plot, I feel confident in declaring it a very minor film in Cavallone's filmography, and a rather weak film overall. There are elements of the story that, if they had been exploited to further effect, could have produced something greater, but as it ended up it's not something I can heartily recommend.

KILLING CAR (JEAN ROLLIN, 1993)

2007-06-09T15:49:00.000-07:00

Killing Car is a far departure from the elements of le fantastique that decorate the directors earlier and more well known films. There are no vampires, zombies, and Rollin's beloved beach from his childhood is also absent. However, despite the lack of any element of the fantastic, the film still retains the directors mark.

The film shows a series of vaguely related vignettes that depict a mysterious women killing various people, one after another, for an unknown reason. The film starts with this woman stealing a car from a scrap yard and killing the owner, which is followed by a chase through abjectly isolated terrain, climaxing at an empty fairground. Unfortunately, the pace of the first scene, which is similar to the chase scene at the beginning of a much more developed Rollin film, Requiem for a Vampire, is never quite matched throughout the rest of the film.

Part of the problem is that the vignettes really seem strung together without any spatial or temporal unity. The only thing linking each of the scenes is the woman killer and a duo of vaguely apathetic police officers who don't appear to be doing any work on the crimes outside of showing up at the crime scenes and commenting on the toy cars that she's leaving behind as a trademark. At one point one of the officers remarks "We know she's a woman," but nothing that the audience is aware has revealed how exactly they know this.

None of the scenes take place in what could be considered a unified sense of space, either. Ranging from the junkyard, to what would appear to be the French country-side, to an empty office building, to a boat dock, there is no signifier to indicate where these locations are in relation to each other. In fact, each seems to exist without a relationship to anywhere, existing solely as the space that is inhabited. And while it's an interested atmosphere, it doesn't help the film as a whole; it's just too disjointed.

The sense of time is also ultimately distorted, which is nothing new for a Rollin film. The aforementioned scene that starts in the junkyard begins with a woman of 20 walking outside in her pajamas, yawning and stretching, seeming to indicate that it's morning. Within about five minutes of screen time, once the chase has gotten underway, the girl remarks "But it's almost night!" which welcomes darkness, and then shortly after this it is light once again.

While ultimately a lack of spatial or temporal cordination would, in a more major Rollin film, be perfectly acceptable and undoubtedly augment the poetic, dreamlike atmosphere that Rollin is wonderful at creating, in this film it exists only as a hindrance. The major problem with the film actually lies withing the dialogue and the acting.

While acting in a Rollin film generally consists of a sort of anti-acting that I largely admire within the context of Rollin's filmography, the actors, outside of Tiki Tsang and Rollin himself (in a cameo) are very poor. The actors, in this case, are actually trying too hard, in a very sort of over-dramatic way which is a major detriment towards any atmosphere Rollin is trying to create. Combining this overstated, poor acting method with the films dialogue, which is utterly cliche, creates a sort of campy farcical environment, which is utterly out of place within the film.

In fact much of the film seems to be some sort of odd, minimal parody of the thriller genre, where every minor opportunity to throw in the obvious is taken. If this had been the first Rollin film that I had ever seen I would immediately consider it a ridiculous train wreck, as that's actually more or less what it is. It's mood is completely off throughout almost the entire film, and not in a compelling sort of way. When the main motivation of the killer herself is revealed in what would generally be considered a climactic scene, it is actually something utterly banal and almost a mockery of the moment of revelation in more general thriller/revenge films.

Despite how bad it is, like I said initially, there are still elements of the film that are utterly Rollin, and it's these moments that will make the film slightly rewarding for the dedicated Rollin fan. To begin, the aforementioned disjointed sense of space, while bad for the film, still sort of exists in the utterly depersonalized, blank setting that most of Rollins films exist in. The locations on their own are fairly amazing, always more or less totally devoid of any form of life-- if there's one thing that Rollin understands, it's how to make wide open spaces seem more dangerous and claustrophobic that tightly closed spaces.

Many of the deaths in the film are also direct references to earlier works of Rollins. In one scene, Tiki Tsang pops out of a grandfather clock, a la Shiver of the Vampires, in another, she wields a scythe invoking the image of Brigitte Lahaie on the bridge in Fascination. In another, she kills with a pitchfork, invoking the rural events that occur in both Grapes of Death and the beginning of Living Dead Girl. Also, according to Pete Tombs and Cathal Tohill in their quintessential Immoral Tales, an entire segment of the film consists of outtakes from Rollin's 1989 film Lost in New York. Aside from these images, two of Rollin's favorite actors, Michel Gentil and Jean-Pierre Bouyxou also have small roles.

With these signifiers suggesting that Rollin was possibly intending this film to be a subtle career "overview," one is forced to question the nature of Rollin's filmography itself. Is Rollin, who himself gets killed at the end of the film, condemning his work? It seems unlikely, as in interviews Rollin seems very passionate and proud of his major films. So the motivation behind the film is a mystery.

Fortunately for the viewer, the last 10 minutes or so of the film fall into a more familiar Rollin atmosphere; the film culminating with Tiki Tsang walking slowly through an empty, dead field. She herself is now vacant, almost a zombie, reminiscent of many of the vampires of Rollin's earlier career. But what's important here is the image itself, The stark contrast of the empty field with the sky calls to mind the all important beach in Rollin's film world, and this subversion, matching the visual schemata of his favorite image, is obviously a very conscious decision on Rollin's part. And while this ending doesn't transcend the mediocrity of the rest of the film, it does instill a sense of relief in the viewer as it reveals that Rollin is still the same man he's always been.

FRUSTRATION (JOSE BENAZERAF, 1971)

2007-06-02T19:52:00.000-07:00

Frustration is what would seem to be Jose Benazeraf's most acclaimed film (I cannot back that up yet as it's only the second film of his that I've had the opportunity to see, however), and it's a bizarre film indeed. Following the same equation as Polanski's Repulsion more or less does (a woman's sister is married/in love and the woman, being alone, goes insane), Frustration is a uniquely euro-cult take on the narrative, and it ends up being a fairly unique experience.

The plot is minimal; Adélaïde (played by Janine Reynaud who by simply putting her hair up actually appears stern and frigid whereas with hair down is more sexual and appealing) lives with her sister, Agnes, and Agnes' husband Michel (played by eurocult regular Michel Lemoine, who also co-wrote the script). While Michel and Agnes appear to be utterly enveloped by each other within their marriage, Adélaïde is thoroughly frustrated by it. She seems to miss the days when she and her sister were closer, and there wasn't an outsider involved in their relationship.

Adélaïde appears to fetishize the relationship, forming some sort of deep sexual attraction to her sister that is made most apparent early on in the film as Benazeraf's camera slowly lingers over Agnes' lips and tongue as she drinks a glass of scotch. Also, whenever Adélaïde hears her sister and Michel making love she cannot focus on anything else, and she escapes into her mind where bizarre sexual fantasies (which easily form the highlights of the film) play out.

In an attempt to win her sister back and in order to cope with her sexual frustration, Adélaïde first attempts to convince her sister that she doesn't belong in a marriage, that it's not compatible with the sister that she grew up knowing, a more strong, independent woman. As that accomplishes nothing, Adélaïde invents a story about Michel having a mistress, relaying the incident to Agnes in utter, lingering detail. Later, when Agnes approaches Adélaïde again about Michel's mistress, Adélaïde denies having ever said such a thing, to which Agnes replies, "You're completely mad."

Eventually Adélaïde cannot tolerate the situation that she is in, throwing her anxieties into the relationship between Agnes and Michel, and she resorts to violence in order to remedy her madness, which leads to an ending that is both powerful and understated, a combination that seems to be one of Benazeraf's strengths.

The film is not overly exploitive, rather, Benazeraf subverts images that are regularly seen in exploitation films and turns them into taut images that Adélaïde projects from her mind, incidents that push Adélaïde further and further away from sanity. In the earliest, strongest example of Adélaïde's madness, she imagines her self desperately running down an extended hallway, opening each and every door to find her sister and Michel in a different sexual position. Adélaïde continues to desperately seek solace from this sexual interaction that she so dearly desires but has no access to as the music continues to build.

In order to emphasize the fractured state of Adélaïde's mind, Benazeraf seems to employ a sort of fractured narrative and aural structure by way of editing. During Adélaïde's "fantasies" the music will crescendo and stop before the action on screen has achieved the same affect, creating a sort of dichotomy that emphasizes a sense of instability. At first the effect seems jarring and unnecessary, but as the film continues the sound design plays more and more into Adélaïde's emotional state and ends up being quite successful. The visual editing is similar, as in the aforementioned scene where Adélaïde lingers on Agnes' lips as she drinks a glass of scotch; during this scene (and other incidents of Adélaïde's 'fantasies,') any sense of time is abandoned. Elements are repeated without any sense of rhythm, creating a discordant visual style that adds to the tension that is rapidly building.

Another interesting factor in the film is how banal everything outside of Adélaïde's fantasies seems. The large, antiquated manor that the threesome reside in is gray and unwelcoming, with nothing particularly 'homey' about it. In fact, the one 'homey' signifier that is ever present in the film is a Christmas tree, which within five minutes of the films' runtime is shown being taken down. The French country side that the manor is located in is also far from romantic in the brief amount of time the characters spend outside of the house. The countryside, at the tail end of winter, is also gray and decaying, with the trees and plants all dead and the weather constantly overcast.

While it's not a perfect film (for instance, the aforementioned fractured stylizations don't work quite as well as they could), it's a very interesting one, and anybody who has an interest in the more psychological side of the euro-cult world (while still carrying enough visually stimulating elements to appease the more visually oriented fans) should do themselves a favor and track the film down.

L'ETREINTE (PAUL COLLET & PIERRE DROUOT, 1969)

2007-05-31T00:41:00.000-07:00

aka GISELE, aka THE EMBRACE

Six years before Just Jaeckin hit it big with his soft-focus, epic version of Pauline Reage's novel, The Story of O, this Belgian oddity was made. While it doesn't precisely follow the story put forth in the novel, it is blatantly inspired by the novel, referring to it by name.

The film introduces us to Michel, a young, rich man, who at the beginning of the film is throwing up in his kitchen sink during a wild, decadent, late-'60s party. We also discover that the last maid he had has quit, so a friend recommends he places an add for a live-in aid. Shortly after, shy, young Gisele arrives at the lavish apartment building while Michel is at work, finding a note on the door telling the new help to come in. Michel had specifically wanted an older aid, but after meeting Gisele is convinced to let her stay.

Gisele is introduced to Michel's wildly reckless lifestyle, and handles it almost completely apathetically, remaining virtually mute and vacant in response to all that's going on around her. She just keeps up with her duties and keeps to herself.

One night, Michel tries to have a conversation with Gisele, discovering that she had once lived with her aunt and uncle, but her aunt got jealous when her uncle was paying more attention to her than his wife. So Gisele has more or less "escaped" to the city, and whether or not this is an improvement or not is not exactly ever revealed.

After their discussion, Michel more or less rapes Gisele and Gisele ends up falling in love with him, never having received that sort of 'love' before. Michel tells her that she is going to be his "O," (irritatingly spelled out as "Oo" in the subtitles of the version I was watching) and he is going to teach her the ways of modern living and loving, vaguely explaining the narration that takes place in The Story of O.

Unfortunately for Gisele, Michel is no Sir Stephan. He doesn't have the same type of character as the main players in Reage's novel, rather, he's simply seeking new sensations, and his handling of events complicates the relationship.

The film itself is beautiful to look at in the same way the films that Radley Metzger made notorious through his company Audubon films; it's decadent, colorful, and an utter time capsule of how the rich and "liberated" lived at the time (at least according to the movies). And for a majority of the film one wonders if it's another simple cash in on the "rich people sex drama" that ends up terribly misrepresenting it's source material, but some of the turns it takes reveals it to be something more.

The Story of O was initially published in 1954, and, in the same way it became chic in the US to be seen catching a screening of Gerard Damiano's Deep Throat with your girlfriend/lover/wife, it slowly rose to a popular acclaim and it became very chic to have read the book, a topic of discussion often brought up at bourgeois dinner parties.

Though it's pure speculation on my part, I'm fairly confident in the idea that most of people who read the novel while it's popularity peaked didn't quite understand it. I don't say that in an elitist sort of way, rather I mean to imply that in the same way the general public don't understand the actual implications and ideas behind S/M, I'm almost sure that a core audience accepted it as purely 'shocking' titillation that just happened to be well written. But the idea in the novel goes much further than that-- it really recognizes O as an utterly liberated sexual being. Early feminist organizations protested the book and some critics still claim that, despite being written by a woman (the apocryphal Pauline Reage was eventually revealed to be Dominique Aury [aka Anne Desclos]), the book serves to do nothing but objectify a woman in the most blatant and powerful way possible. Which is more or less missing the point, because O is actually the character who has the most control in the novel, but the novel succeeds in showing O actually arriving at this point through a progression of events.

But enough about the novel, the film is relevant because it manages to show a misunderstood interpretation of the novel by a chic jet-setting member of the bourgeois. Michel, bored with having everything he wants, attempts to reenact the novel in order to spice up his sex life. But Michel replaces the implicit trusting power exchange that's present in actual S/M with testosterone fueled machismo. It doesn't help Michel's case that Gisele is utterly naive and virginal. The place that each finds themselves in, for a while, creates an illusion that sustains itself until Michel goes away on a business trip and Gisele spends the better part of a month with one of Michel's friends, Leni.

Aware of what is occurring between Michel and Gisele, Leni gives Gisele a copy of The Story of O to read so she can understand what's going on. And while Gisele still insists that she loves Michel, she seems to actually understand his motivation in terms of the more degrading acts he insists upon. And after the two reunite, the relationship grows sour. Gisele is no longer the virginal, naive girl that she was when Michel left, as Leni served to actually introduce Gisele to a more modern life. Gisele begins to stand up to herself and doesn't obey Michel's every whim.

And Michel becomes somewhat crushed by this discovery; the fact that his "slave" is no longer in a position of ignorance, and he doesn't know how to handle it. He tries to win her old self back by acts of cruelty and violence, but Gisele cannot shed the knowledge she has gained. Finally, within the last minutes of the film, Michel finally finds his epiphany, and finds himself understand that he has been ridiculous, and that he really honestly loves Gisele. And it is a beautiful realization, but an unwanted one.

Like I mentioned before, until the direct inclusion of The Story of O in the narrative of the film, I simply thought the film was a terribly weak and misguided attempt to cash in on the popularity of S/M in high society sex dramas (think Radley Metzger's The Image [aka The Punishment of Anne] or various scenes and incidents throughout the films of Max Pecas and Jose Benazeraf). However, once the connection is drawn between the popularity of Reage's novel and the character of Leni pointing out that Michel is just bored and looking for sensation, everything comes together in a cohesive whole.

That's not to say the film is perfect; the narrative flow is flawed and the progression of time is unclear. If it weren't for different outfits that the characters wear one couldn't tell that the day had even changed, let alone an extended period of time. There are also some extemporaneous details that are interesting additions to the sets of the film, but add little to the actual content (for example, a large book of Belgian surrealist Paul Delvaux's work is very clearly displayed in one scene). However, that can be overlook as there are also some very nice details that actually serve to subtly add to the plot, such as a large poster in Michel's kitchen of the 1966 French film Qui êtes vous, Polly Maggoo? The William Klein film served as a "satirical art house movie on mid-sixties French society" (description taken from Wikipedia). It's interested that this is included, as the inclusion more or emphasizes that the commentary on the popularity of S/M and how it is constantly misunderstood in popular culture was utterly intentional. This is interesting as the general audience of the chic, escapist erotic dramas were people who wanted nothing more than sensation.

So all in all, despite it's flaws L'Etreinte is what I imagine to be a dead on critique of popular culture's assimilation of "outsider" sexual fetishes/practices. Aside from it's social commentary, the characters that decorate the film are very attractive, and the wonderful interior decorating is enough to keep a fan of modern industrial design fully entertained.

LOST PARADISE (MASAMI AKITA, 1990)

2007-05-24T01:21:00.000-07:00

aka Shitsurakuen: jôbafuku onna harakiri

It may seem odd that I'm taking time to review what is ostensibly (from my understanding, at least) a fetish film. In fact it may even seem counter productive; the purpose of any fetish film or video is not primarily to achieve any sort of art outside of the fetish as depicted. The films and videos make no effort to appear to a general customer, rather they are tailored to the specific, niche audience that spends time waiting for the films that will fill their specific desires.

Lost Paradise is one of six seppuku videos produced by Right Brain Video in the early 1990s. I have no idea how they sold, whether or not they were actually intending to be sold alongside more general AV releases or if they were more specialty gore videos (the early 90s were also the time when the infamous Guinea Pig movies got their start and notoriety). So while I'm not sure of the exact purpose the videos served, for the purposes of this review I will treat the film as a specialty fetish video.

What little plot exists in Lost Paradise can be explained briefly; a woman in militaristic garb walks down a hallway. This image is alternatively cut between with a man standing in front of a fire. After she walks down the hallway, the woman sits down and begins to partially disrobe, revealing the top of her panties and her breasts (which, from what I understand, is a regular element of a seppuku video, which is partially why I'm assuming it's fetishistic intentions), and begins fondling her stomach. Eventually she pulls out a knife and partially wraps it in clothe, and inserts the knife on the left side of her stomach, eventually pulling it all the way across. As the knife slowly progresses, following large splays of blood, her innards begin to fall out while she continues to painfully and ecstatically moan. Eventually, she dies. Shortly after a man walks into the room, starts shouting (the copy I watched was not subtitled so I'm unsure of any relevance to the video as a whole that the dialogue may or may not have) and then shoots himself in the head. After the camera lingers on the two dead bodies from above, a fade out occurs and we see a new woman, also in militaristic garb, carrying a whip as an older man crawls before her. Fade out to credits.

The whole thing lasts about 34 minutes, and really, doesn't amount to much on a surface level. The video work is utterly amateurish; and by that I mean that you can literally tell that there is somebody behind the lens that you (being the viewer) are currently looking through, which is slightly distracting, but something that one can more or less get used to. It is also not the type of thing that would be championed by gore hounds; it's very slow paced, and the gore is blatantly faked.

But those things really don't matter to me; rather, it's something that the video got me thinking about that was interesting. As I was viewing the film as a fetish video (I suppose as opposed to a gore video), the whole idea of representation became particularly relevant. To the fetishist, it doesn't matter that the camera work is below par and the whole ordeal looks utterly faked-- what matters is that the idea that the fetishist is interested in is blatantly presented. And it's this that lead to me considering the fabrication of the ideas in these videos-- I would presume that those who make the videos have to more or less share the fetish themselves, at least for their videos to achieve any sort of notoriety within the filmmakers target niche. So really, watching the video is like watching a process, and what comes out of a process; the concept of the entire ordeal is utterly on display within the frame.

Naturally, I didn't hate the video. The music, done by the director Masami Akita (which is more or less the reason I bothered to track the video down in the first place-- which, by the way, at least some of the tracks in the video are from Music for Bondage Performance) perfectly echoes what is displayed on screen. It's interesting for me, as a fan of harsh noise music, to see what happens when an image is directly juxtaposed with the sound, as I often find the soundscapes themselves create quite a mental visual image. The musical selections that Akita chooses are some of his subtler, "low grumbling" pieces, which while being more or less omnipresent throughout the video, crescendo and consciously insert themselves periodically throughout the duration, and it is through these moments that it becomes apparent that Akita is primarily a musician; he shows an utter understand of how the music he creates actually works. Another thing that I found of interest was the ritualistic nature of the events, and then my reaction of placing ritual in a fetish context. It is very methodical, and very planned. It's unfortunate that the camera woman is somewhat inept (although, alternatively it could just be that a lower-end video camera was being used), because a sublime beauty within the ritual is indeed lurking, but the videography does absolutely nothing to reveal it.

I should note, however, that there are elements of the film that are going over my head. The sequence of events at the beginning of the video (the *thing* falling off the woman's boots and then the man burning these same unidentified *things*) and the end (the man who enters and shoots himself in the head) are beyond anything I can comprehend, due to either my lack of familiarity with esoteric symbols that are either cultural or specific to the fetish, or also probably in part to my lack of knowledge of the small about of dialogue that's present. So the film could be something more than I'm relating it as, but from my viewing experience, this is what I can respond to.

In conclusion, as a film itself Lost Paradise is nothing special, nothing even noteworthy really. It's as a process, as a moment of ritualised fetish, that the video transcends what it actually is and becomes something worth talking about. And because of that, because of the ideas that it confronted me with, I can honestly say that it's interesting.

LAST HOUSE ON DEAD END STREET (ROGER WATKINS, 1977)

2007-05-18T14:58:00.000-07:00

A few years ago, when Barrel released their marvelous special edition DVD of Last House on Dead End Street, it was seemingly all that genre fans and magazines could talk about. There was tons to read about the history of the film, tons of back story, and a countless number of people claiming LHODES as the most disturbing film ever made. But for some reason, despite it's welcoming into what could be considered a horror "canon," Last House... has rarely been mentioned since then. Originally released in May of 1977, this year, 2007, marks its 30th anniversary. Also, this year marks the sad death of its director, Roger Watkins, who was also responsible for several brilliantly atmospheric hardcore films made between the late 70s and 80s.

The plot of the film, at least in it's current viewable version, is large inconsequential to the grand guignol set pieces that give the film the reputation it has. In fact, it can more or less be summarized in a single sentence: Terry Hawkins gets released from prison and, mad at the world, decides to start making and selling snuff films to take revenge on the world and contribute to a sense of moral decay. But not surprisingly, that simple of a reduction overlooks everything that makes the film worthwhile.

The reason for the success, the power, of the film lies in the fact that it exists in somewhat of a void of pure, abject horror. There are no characters in the film that one can feel any pity for, every character is utterly despicable. Even Terry's victims are awful people, one of the men's wife getting dolled up in black face in order to be whipped by a man while party guests laugh in glee and clap. This is the world that the characters are situated in. It's hopeless, dirty, and very bleak.

I mentioned that the film in it's current viewable state has a plot holes the size of Texas, but this could, and very likely is, due to the fact that the only available version of the film is 74 minutes long, whereas supposedly, somewhere in a New York film archive, a 175 minute version is sitting. One cannot even imagine what exists in the other 100 minutes of film, but I think it's safe to assumed that the plotholes would be filled. The main plot hole being simply that the audience is never shown any progression between when Terry hooks up with the "producer" of his films and when Terry gets overly screwed by the producer, which leads to the films utterly memorable climax. All we can currently see is more or less the first meeting between Terry and the man, and then Terry's backlash. While it is a shortcoming overall, there are more than enough redeeming factors to the film that make it worthwhile.

Nowhere else in cinematic history has such an abject void existed so successfully. Virtually everything that occurs serves to disorient, confuse, terrify or disturb the viewer. What really makes the film work so well are the bizarre small touches that decorate the film and bewilder the audience; the masks that Terry has his 'girls' where during films, the fake head arbitrarily placed next to the head of a victim as she is dismembered, the black face the woman wears while being whipped, and the climactic deer hoove that the producer is forced to fellate during his final moments. As a whole, they literally add up to not much, but their placement and subtlety (and unexpectedness) force these objects and displacements to become signifiers that signify that something is very, very wrong.

It is for this reason that the film is an utter success; it's a remarkably no-budget film that exists not within the realm of the 'so-bad-it's-good,' but rather exists as pure atmosphere. The story isn't necessary; if all the viewer could see was the film with it's remarkably perfect score, no dialogue or voice overs, the exact same affect would be achieved. It may be very obvious that when Watkins made the film he was intending to play into the Manson phenomenon (particularly invoked by Terry's girls chanting things such as "Terry will solve everything, Terry will remove your fear"), as well as the conceptual idea of snuff that was closely linked to that incident. But what Watkins truly succeeds in doing is cinematically constructing the idea of the "other," that which is deeply terrifying to humans. The "other," in this films case, is a nihilistic, utterly abstracted snuff film director, and the nihilistic, utterly abstract content of his snuff films. And it is truly terrifying.

But, as it naturally often does, with the terror comes a sense of beauty. The aforementioned signifiers that further separate reality from this filmic world are sublimely remarkable. From a purely aesthetic sense, divorced of any political context, a white woman, nude, with significantly overplayed black face on being repeatedly whipped while party guests clap and laugh is a very, very powerful and beautiful image. Same goes for the use of dollar store masks that repeated create the surreal sensations of Terry's snuff films; they're separate from reality, another layer upon what is literally happening (and using a mask is both obvious and genius in this case), and create beautiful images.

Another thing that works wonders for the film is the abandoned university building that a majority of the film is shot in. Brilliantly empty and decrepit, it creates a sense of physical space that perfect matches the metaphysical space implicit in the abject horror of the void.

So, while the film does suffer serious short comings in terms of plot, it's highly irrelevant to the success of the film. Undoubtedly if the plot were better thought out and actually there it would do nothing but extend the ideas of the film even further, pushing it possibly into the realm of something that would be far more notorious. But as it stands, it's still a sublimely beautiful piece of atmosphere decorated with utter desperation and nihilism.

DAUGHTERS OF DARKNESS (HARRY KUMEL, 1971)

2007-05-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

After my initial viewing of Daughters of Darkness several years ago, before I had fully identified myself as an utter film enthusiast, and before I had figured out the exact type of film that would become my favorite (being the types of films I've discussed here), I realized that what I had just watched was an intelligent, beautiful, astounding masterpiece. I was blown away by the impact that the film had on me, but I wasn't sure why. Up until that point my film viewing history has consisted of mainly watching average horror movies and canonical art house fare; this movie turned out to take the best from each 'genre' and combine them so perfectly-- it was this movie that lead to me seeking out more "art house horror movies," it was this film that (thankfully) lead me to where I am today!

The plot of the film is an elaborately constructed fever dream, and much more rewarding when it unfolds for the viewer unexpectedly, so I won't go into too much detail here. The film begins by introducing the viewer to Stefan and Valerie, a young couple who were recently married after not knowing each other for very long. The two are traveling from Switzerland to England so Valerie can meet Stefan's "mother," but end up staying in Ostend before they leave. In Ostend, they stay at a decadent, large, and empty hotel, and before long a mysterious woman by the name of Elizabeth Bathory and her assistant Ilona end up in the same hotel.

As soon as the mysterious women arrive at the hotel, the tension that has thus far been building between Stefan and Valerie almost explodes; Valerie is insistent upon Stefan's mother knowing about his marriage, but Stefan seems to be terrified by his mother and her "aristocratic" values. The Countess also seems to have an intense interest in the young couple, as as the days and nights unfold her motives appear more and more specific.

On a day trip to neighboring town, Stefan and Valerie encounter a crime scene decorated by passerbys-- the body of a young woman has been found, dead, without a trace of blood. As the body is carried to the ambulance Stefan becomes utterly entranced, violently pushing Valerie aside when she asks him to leave. The body is the fourth found in the area, all of the bodies utterly drained of blood. Whether or not the Countess Bathory, with her heritage leading back to the sadistic Erzebet Bathory, has anything to do with the deaths becomes clearer as the film progresses.

The film ends up becoming a magnificent vampire film with hardly any of the motifs that repeatedly pop up in most vampire related flicks. Kumel masterfully throws in a few symbolic signifiers to implicate the Countess as a vampire, but the weight of the story doesn't rely on mere gimmicks. The film is deeply saturated in colors, mostly consisting of the deep red (everywhere from clothing to cars to the lips of Delphine Seyrig's Countess) and an epic blue (the sky, the ocean bordering the hotel). The contrast between the two primary colors is utterly striking, and helps to visually extend the tension that is present in the plot.

The film also contains very little cut scenes, choosing instead to linger on the situations that are occurring, coupled with brilliant tracking shots that reveal more and more details and clues to the film as they move along. The visuals are also accompanied by a brilliant score from François de Roubaix that is both sexually swanky, tense, and atmospheric at the same time. It matches the visuals so perfectly that I couldn't even begin to imagine any other music with what's on screen.

But aside from a brilliant plot, sense of visuals, and musical score, the element that makes this film stand out so far above many is it's tone and sense of atmosphere. For an example of a single scene that elevates the movie to an utter masterpiece, look no farther than the scene in which Stefan and Valeria return from Bruges, which serves as the initial introduction between the young couple and the Countess. Sitting in an elegantly upholstered arm chair, sipping a turquoise martini, the countess eventually moves behind Stefan, sensually rubbing his chest while the two intensely recount the details of the story of Erzebet Bathory-- the camera slowly zooms in, interrupted only by Valerie screaming "Stop!" while the music heightens-- the scene alone is worth the price of admission, so to speak.

There are countless subtleties to the film that not only heighten the atmosphere, but also extend the psycho-sexual story of Stefan and Valerie's relationship into something truly worthwhile. The film, in actuality, has the relationship more at it's core than the vampires that help to extend these ideas. It's almost safe to say that the vampires are symbolic, but doing so would over look much of what makes the film a success.

This film is truly deserving of a more serious study (for instance, I haven't even touched upon the issue of masculinity and Stefan's "mother"), and one day I hope that study gets written, whether by me or someone else. Until then I will leave you with this, hopefully inspiring those who have yet to check out the film to give it a chance, and possibly to give those who have only half-heartedly seen the film to pay a lot more attention.

For more information on Jean Ferry, screenwriter for the film, head on over to Ombres Blanches for a detailed overview of the authors life.

FATA MORGANA (VICENTE ARANDA, 1965)

2007-04-20T17:36:00.000-07:00

Fata Morgana, not to be confused with the Werner Herzog film of the same title, is the brilliantly complex debut film from Vicente Aranda that lies somewhere between the films of Jess Franco, Alain Robbe-Grillet, and the gialli film.

Set in a town that, for reasons unknown and never revealed to the audience, is being abandoned, the story centers around supermodel Gim. A pre-credits opening sequence reveals that five years ago, a woman was murdered; her killer never found. Why was
she murdered? Because she was born to be a victim, in the same way many are born to be killers. The sequence (which is illustrated in a sort of pseudo-comic book form, similar to certain scenes in Corrado Farina's Baba Yaga) then reveals that now the same killer will kill again. The new victim is to be Gim, and special agent JJ accepts the mission to try to rescue her, despite the near impossibility of success.

Gim is tangentially romantically linked with a man, Alvaro. Unfortunately there is another woman romantically linked to Alvaro; the extremely jealous Miriam who, after the death of her beloved husband Jerry, is not quite stable. The first half or so of the movie develops the relationships and interactions between the three; none of them want to leave the city despite the fact that it has been virtually abandoned. Other inhabitants still in the city include a professor lecturing on the nature of the victim/killer relationship, a few servant-types, a group of five boys who are obsessed with Gim and never speak, as well as what appear to be some social deviants (criminals, roughnecks).

Somewhere in the second half of the movie the special agent in charge of tracking down Gim shows up, and some blood is finally shed; all the while a higher power continues to suggest that all inhabitants of the city get out. It's a very interesting technique by which Aranda subverts the idea behind a gialli film (a genre in which this film is often grouped); the audience is not waiting to see who will be killed next, or who is the killer, rather, the audience is waiting to see whether or not Gim will actually be murdered, and there are many moments (this is where Aranda shows a fantastic handle of suspense) where it's a high possibility.

The film fully succeeds existing in it's own world, which many films set out to do. Aranda's success come from a number of things; mainly his method of keeping the audience in the dark about virtually every characters motivation. There is no police force left in the city, and it appears that the only two women still around are Gim and Miriam; whereas virtually every man who's present, except for Alvaro, is an implied threat.

A chase scene through abandoned factory buildings is highly reminiscent of an early scene from Alain Robbe-Grillet's Eden and After. Robbe-Grillet's film, made five years later, with such similar tone and atmosphere (which is one of pressure and confusion) to such an extent than one must wonders if Robbe-Grillet had ever seen the film. The chase scene, involving Agent JJ and a group of three unknown men, echoes a scene that almost directly follows it; Gim running through the city trying to encounter some sort of solace in a world where it everybody is against her. The parallels provide an interesting contrast to what normally occurs in a regular suspense film; the main structure therein being something along the lines of authority figure chasing 'killer' chasing victim. The deconstruction of the cliche, aside from heightening the surreal atmosphere, serves to create a sort of tension that is unlike almost anything one can generally encounter in film.

The crux of the film, or the thesis, if you will, lies within the lecture that a professor gives on the nature of the killer/victim relationship, and the idea that individuals are born into the position they take on within the dynamics of the killer/victim relationship. Through a slide show of photographs, which starts out depicting frightened women, the professor describes that these victims were victims because they were born to be victims, their beauty an element of the fact that they are victims. The professor then delves into the murder that happened before, committed by the killer who is presumably going to kill Gim. Aranda brilliantly uses the voyeuristic device of a camera as the only proof of the crime being committed; the body from the former murder has not been found, but there are photographs that graphically depict the murder. It is through this device that the film, by way of the central idea (being that an individual can be born a victim) only applies to the woman as victim, escapes claims of misogyny. Because the viewer is watching the incidents on screen, the film, which itself was shot with a camera; a separating element that very cleverly (and subtly) calls attention to the fact that it is a film that one is watching.

Another interesting point to note is that the film was shot in 1965, but the plot places 1965 somewhere in the past. It is in this method that the audience discovers that what is on screen is an image of the 'future,' subverting the all too typical ideas of a dystopic future evident in much genre film of the same time period.

All in all, the film is a brilliant surprise, very refined and innovating, enigmatic and stimulating. Even if watched while presumed a gialli film the audience would not be disappointed; while the film obviously doesn't have all of the markings of the genre, it's an adventurous film that is exciting nonetheless.

EURO-TRASH AESTHETICS & THE IMPORTANCE OF THE IGNORED

2007-04-08T17:35:00.000-07:00

Or, A Primer to Watching European Genre Cinema

Sin in soft focus: Udo Kier in Walerian Borowczyk's Blood of Dr. Jekyll

If you've been reading my blog for a while (hell, or if you've just looked at the sidebar to glance at the titles I've talked about) you're undoubtedly aware of my unwavering devotion to marginal films that most film-snobs would immediately dismiss based solely on their subject matter, and in some cases, undeserved reputation as "bad films." It seems like the films I love, for the most part, got off to an initial, critical start. The horror film (which, when it comes down to it, is really what my beloved films, for the most part, are at heart) has throughout cinematic history been considered a simple "popular" genre, and based on this assumption alone it has been overlooked as a purveyor of cinematic art.

This reputation has provided very interesting opportunities for film makers. Once producers realized that the viewing public would pay money for a movie, and more or less not complain, if it featured enough scares, enough blood, enough actual horror. So producers allowed themselves to be lazy. They lowered the allowed budgets for these film makers, concerned with nothing but cheap thrills and the desire to make a buck. Because of this apathy towards the movies themselves, horror, as a genre, started to become something special.

It's a blatantly simple thing to understand in both theory and practice. Lack of budgets for special effects or even long enough shooting schedule forced film makers to experiment, to try new things in order to compensate what they considered a short coming. It's amazing how many parallels can be found between experimental cinema and genre cinema throughout history. There's a major difference though; the genre film makers were experimenting in order to achieve the means to a narrative they desired, giving, more often than not, a true reason for their experiments, as opposed to many films of the avant-garde that were completely not concerned with narrative. Don't get me wrong, I'm an ardent supporter of avant garde and experimental film, but often what it comes down to in response to these films is the fact that they're really interesting and great, but don't accomplish anything.

Genre cinema, on the other hand, takes these innovative stylistic choices, creative use of editing, colors, mise-en-scene, and puts them towards a greater whole; a narrative experience. Aside from 'forced' experimentation, once producers were backing off while simply providing basic requirements that the film makers must meet, genre film directors could do more or less whatever they wanted with the rest of the film. In America a perfect, early example of this would be the films of Val Lewton, a producer at RKO studios who had an extensive hand in all of the films that he 'produced' (and more often then not, wrote, helped direct, helped edited, etc). As a one-man powerhouse, Lewton almost single handedly changed the horror genre from a filmic entity focused on Universal monsters into something decidedly more adult, something with psychological impact and all the same elements that canonical, "important" films of the time had. Even Doris Wishman's zero budget films often had sublime moments that come from her fetishizing ordinary living room objects in such an abject fashion that feeling, a sense of importance, is generated.

A monochromatic scream in Massimo Dallamano's What Have They Done to Solange?

But more to the point, to my heart and mind it is the so called "Euro-Trash" that should hold the crown in cinematic history. It is a genre so diverse and intelligent that I've grown to almost resent its generic title. Euro Trash. The term applied to cinema is generally understood to be referring to blatantly exploitative, generic, incompetent films with loads of naked flesh, gore, and incomprehensible plots. And this is where the resentment comes from, as that description couldn't be farther from what really lies at the heart of what I prefer to refer to as "European Genre Cinema."

As in any subgrouping of film, there are bound to be films that are better than others. There are even bound to be films that really are utterly unredeemable trash, films that deserve to be delegated to the bottom of the bin and never dredged up from the past. This is just to clarify that I'm not attempting to make a case for an entire genre as a whole. That in itself is more or less impossible to do for any genre, even well regarded and respected ones. There are dire drama films. There are dire noir films. There are utterly dire "art house films" (which, for the record, is another term that I find almost completely empty in regards to what that actually means). But, also like any subgrouping, there are utterly amazing films. But I'll take it one step further. I would argue that not only are there some utterly amazing films in the "Euro Trash" subgroup, but rather there are many. In fact there are so many that the entire genre as a whole deserves to be place up so high on a pedestal that film studies students everywhere suddenly forget about formerly canonized films such as The Third Man, The Godfather, Seven Samurai or even Citizen Kane. The rewards of "Euro Trash" cinema are unending, accomplishing things that the aforementioned films couldn't dream of accomplishing.

To start it off, in order to not just be sprouting off random examples of why European Genre Cinema is so great, it is necessary to divide ideas into groups of unified aesthetics that the important and rewarding films have to offer. Also, as a preface, I will be making little mention of the films of directors Dario Argento or Mario Bava. They are directors that have been deservedly canonized (more or less), so need no help from me in finding their audience.

THE IDEA OF REPRESENTATION
The first importance of European Genre Cinema is the implicit understanding the directors had that cinema is not reality. In the same way Magritte made his now infamous "Ceci n'est pas un pipe" painting, which feature a visual representation of a tobacco pipe, European Genre Cinema directors perfectly understand that cinema is not reality. Cinema is an art form that allows the non-real to visual exist in the mind of the viewer. Within this context, what you could term a 'non-realist' viewpoint, there is no necessity for the events in a film to follow the same logic that the everyday world does. A common complain by many viewers is that the film they've just watched "doesn't make sense." This is more or less an empty statement. You could clarify by stating, "This film doesn't make sense according to the laws of reality," but what does that indicate about the film itself? Nothing; for the film itself is not reality, it is a film. In a films inherent dream logic, why is it an example of a "bad" film if a character dies and then shows up again later in the film, such as in Jean Rollin's darkly lyrical debut feature The Rape of the Vampire? The film is distanced from reality, vampires don't exist in the real world, so how can we, as viewers, make the assumption that this apocryphal creature, and even the apocrphal non-creatures (existing more or less as representations of what we understand to be humans) have to abide to laws of reality? It doesn't disrupt the flow of the film, rather it extends a parallel filmic universe that we are watching events unfold in.

Also, with film existing as an art form and not reality, European Genre directors often use what is now understood as structuralist film techniques to expand ideas by non-sequiturs. A barrage of scenes that appear to be seemingly unrelated or confusing often with serve to develop an idea that is necessary to the films narrative, such as in the case with Robbe-Grillet's La Belle Captive where three film worlds are depicted virtually right after each other in order to clarify an idea. It is not randomness when one scene jumps to another without an obvious connection, an active viewer of the film should have no problem picking up connections
by theme or even juxtaposition.

The endless beach in Jean Rollins Rose of Iron

Another major complaint over European Genre cinema, divorced from non-sequential scenes, is the "bad special effects." Once again, to return to the point; why is it a flaw when blood looks fake if the blood is fake. When a character in a movie dies, the actor portraying the character does not die. Rather, a representation of an idea dies, and the method of death is of little consequence. If a viewer is actively seeking out a representation of death that accurately complies with real life death, he or she is better off watching the news. "Bad special effects" give directors an opportunity to add poetry, or even deeper meaning to a scene. Blood can be representative of more than just blood, it can carry many more connotations.

THE NECESSITY OF NON-ACTING/OVERACTING
Another oft-heralded complaint of European Genre Cinema is "bad acting." The idea of bad acting relates to the aforementioned category; how can you judge the way a character is acting in a non-real world when you yourself do not exist in that world? If the film is successful then non-acting or even overacting seem complacent, fitting. For example, in many Jess Franco films the actors and actresses are accused of simply "wandering through the film" as some sort of "zombie." Atmosphere is an important element of many of Franco's films, and what is termed "realist" acting would fail to fit within his narrative. Take, for example, Soledad Miranda in the 1970 film Eugenie de Sade. Miranda does exist in the film as a wide-eyed witness to events that she rarely responsively emotes too, but that's because Miranda's character Eugenie is only a signifier, representing this idea of a naive young girl in response to the terrible events she is taking place in.

The intense emotions of Sam Niell and Isabelle Adjani in Zulawski's Possession

Andzrej Zulawski is another director who characteristically gets panned for having his actors and actresses constantly screaming and wailing in a completely, once again, non-"realist" manner. This is because Zulawski's characters more often than not are simply signifiers for the emotion that the characters are depicting themselves. The emotions are regularly very extreme, even desperate emotions and a "realistic" portrayal of these emotions would be removing the essence of the emotions themselves. were Sam Niell and Isabelle Adjani to interact with each other without the emotional intensity, nothing would be translating to the viewer, the film would simply be a slightly surreal marriage drama. It is the emotional intensity that heightens the awareness and response that the viewer has to the film, and it's brilliantly accomplished.

EROTICISM AND OVERT SEXUALITY
Another key element in European Genre Cinema is the abundance of films that directly or indirectly deal with sexuality. Often dismissed as "soft-core tripe" or "something to be seen on skinemax" there is something very reaffirming about the fact that there were and are directors that care enough about sexuality and erotica to deal with it through artistic, political, and philosophical venues. European Genre Cinema is also one of the few areas of cinema where sex as metaphor is often more successful than sex as sex, and the fact that European Genre Cinema often is connected to the fantastique further extends the fascinating depictions.

Conceptual S/M in Jess Franco's Macumba Sexual

European Genre Cinema is also one of the few areas of world cinema where the essence of Sado-Masochism is explored in a manner fitting to what lies at the heart of S/M. Generally vapidly exploited in mainstream cinema, and dealt with in almost the same way in most European mainstream art-house cinema, European Genre Cinema often, whether through visual, editing, musical, or atmospheric means, hits the nail on the head as far as imbibing the emotional and artistic qualities behind the subculture, often managing to make the S/M far more conceptual, even working to forward the plot.

Despite the fact it’s technically not an example of European Genre Cinema, Radley Metzger’s The Image (aka The Punishment of Anne), which was adapted by the novella of the same name by Catherine Robbe-Grillet (under the pen name of Jean de Berg) manages to perfect carry the essential conceptual tone of the novel into cinematic form (to note, while Metzger is an American, many of his films, including The Image carry the European Genre cinema spirit, and are also generally shot in European locations with European actors and actresses). For an example of a far more conceptual use of S/M, one can look at many of Jess Franco’s films, which often feature S/M scenes as allegory of power dynamics and internal torment.

STYLISTIC VISUALS
One of the most remarkable elements of European Genre Cinema is the fact that a unique visual aesthetic is achieved in almost all of the remarkable films from the subgroup. Even despite the small budgets many films were plagued with, cinematography and set design is almost always a concern. For example, consider the entire sub-genre of gialli films. They were churned out notoriously quick, yet almost ever single film is strikingly decadent in terms of interior design and costume design. These films were meant to be set upon the rich and famous, and without the costume design and interior decorations, this effect could never have been achieved.

Aside from the physical objects depicted in the film, the films also resonate a deeply unique visual tone. Many films adapt very long tracking shots which add a sense of paranoia to the atmosphere (for example, Zulawski’s Possession), many use static shots to conceal and reveal elements of the frame, and Franco’s notoriously “overused” zoom is actually very effective in certain situations, add an emphasis and shifting focus in ways that would otherwise go unnoticed.

Another very important thing in European Genre Cinema is the use of colors. Most of these film makers knew exactly what they were doing when it comes to color, and examples go far beyond the masterful use of color present in Argento and Bava’s oeuvres. Harry Kumel, for example, in one of the most criminally underrated films of all time (and personal favorite) Daughters of Darkness, many of the scenes fade to red, a color that is overly pervasive in the film, creating an utter tension in addition to the other meanings that the color takes on.

Nino Castelnuovo in Radley Metzger's Camille 2000

FINAL NOTES
One more small, significantly less intellectual item to note about European Genre Film is fairly obvious: the men and women that are in these films are the most stunningly gorgeous people on the planet, from any time period! The elegantly gorgeous Delphine Seyrig stars in the aforementioned Daughters of Darkness, stunningly handsome men like Nino Castelnuovo and Fabio Testi decorate many Italian gialli and other genre films, the unforgettable Laura Gemser takes her turn as the Black Emanuelle in many of Joe D’Amato’s best films, and the list goes on and on. If you have any appreciate for aesthetic beauty in human beings of all sorts, then there will always be something to appreciate in a European Genre film!

In conclusion, European “Trash” Cinema is a film genre that deserves just as much recognition as the more canonized genres of film history do. It’s fiercely intelligent and unique, and lives up to and surpasses cinematic standards in all areas. In writing this I’ve realized that almost every idea that’s been brought up could be fleshed out to essay length itself, so I suppose it would work best to consider this as a sort of introduction to the wonderful work of European Genre Cinema.

This article was written for the Trashy Movie Celebration Blog-a-thon.

MIDNIGHT HEAT (ROGER WATKINS, 1983)

2007-03-31T14:42:00.000-07:00

Roger Watkins is most well known, among cult film fans, as the director of the enigmatic Last House on Dead End Street. A masterpiece in it's own right, most fans of the film are only vaguely aware of the career direction that he followed after that film, moving into hardcore films. Luckily, the same elements that made Last House... a minor classic remain present in Watkins' hardcore films, which make them entirely unique.

Jamie Gillis plays Alan, a man who's credo is more or less (I'm paraphrasing here) "if something isn't dangerous, it's not worth doing." The film opens with Alan nonchalantly killing a man. Later, Alan ends up sleeping with the mob boss' wife, which leads to him hiding out, avoiding the threat of death. While Alan is stuck in his slummy hotel room, the viewer experiences flashbacks that Alan has of elements of his life (all involving sex) which have more or less led him to the place where he is today; he is more or less apathetic, an "hollow man" as T.S. Eliot (who is briefly referenced) would say.

We're shown how his relationship with his wife disintegrated by his utter apathy, his inability to emote, or even really have an emotional response to anything. We're shown how his relationship with a whore leads to him having larger, higher profile hit jobs. And none of it is very pretty. Eventually Alan calls an escort service and has two girls come to his hotel room. Once there, he watches while they fuck each other, claiming that he "prefers to watch." After the two are done, he pays them and asks one of the girls, Diane, to say. Despite some concern from the other call girl, Diane agrees.

The two then enter conversation, and an odd dynamic develops between them. They both have more or less desolate, emotionally devoid pasts that have put them in their current place. Aside from Alan's memories that are depicted on screen, the viewer is also privy to some of Diane's past, mainly her relationship with her ex-husband. The two finally end up sleeping together, and the shocking ending is something that would (and possibly even could) never happen in a more recent pornographic film.

Being a pornographic film, there are, of course, many hardcore sex scenes throughout the film. There is nothing remarkable about the sex scenes themselves, but both the context and the actual conceptual implications behind the sex scenes make them above average. Virtually every sex scene in the film is shown not for titillation, but rather to show the power dynamic sex enforces over human beings. The film even opens with a quote from Henry Miller, mentioning that "sex can become a weapon." Sex is used as a control method, and aside from a single seemingly "filler scene" between Alan and the "bosses daughter," none of the film exists as startlingly erotic. It's mostly desolate, with average looking people, in what seem to be more or less desperate situations.

The film as a whole contributes to the idea of modern man being empty. Cut throughout the film are slow-motion shots of homeless people and bums wandering the street or sitting along the gutter. Excellent sound design also further extends this idea, dark somber chords interrupt what would generally be considered to be the generic porno music of the time. The film, as a whole, ends up being a fairly harrowing ideal, while managing to avoid being moralizing in the least. Watkins simply reveals these empty characters, he doesn't pass judgment on them. He seems to view them as stoic; they've put themselves into the modes of life that they currently live in, so they themselves are responsible.

While it's not up to par with Watkins' masterpiece Corruption, Midnight Heat exists as a brilliantly thought-provoking pornographic title. It carries a wonderfully consistent dark atmosphere, and actually has something to say.

LA BELLE CAPTIVE (ALAIN ROBBE-GRILLET, 1983)

2007-03-25T22:59:00.000-07:00

I originally saw La Belle Captive as an Nth generation bootleg without subtitles a year or two ago. I still watched the movie eagerly, savoring the bizarre internal logic and beautiful images which had meaning that I knew I couldn't comprehend with my meager understanding of French. Regardless, I enjoyed the film and knew that I would enjoy it even more once I had an opportunity to see the film with some sort of English options, which I was expecting anytime soon.

Luckily, Koch Lorber has recently released the film on DVD with English subtitles (a first for a Robbe-Grillet directed film), so I have finally had the opportunity to view and evaluate the film while actually understanding the dialogue. And as per usual in a Robbe-Grillet film, the dialogue is a key element to the film, revealing elements that are not implied or ignored by the visuals themselves.

Walter is passing the night at the Matchu Club. He ends up drinking quite a bit, and catches the eye of a beautiful blonde woman. She refuses to give him her name or telephone number, but they dance and laugh all night. Eventually Walter's fun is interrupted when he gets a call from his boss, who needs him to deliver an urgent letter to Henri de Corinthe. On his way delivering the letter, in the middle of the night, he encounters the beautiful blonde woman from the club, lying in the road, injured. He gets her into his car and arrives at the first house he can find with a light on, where there appears to be a mysterious meeting occurring.

He takes the woman to a room where a doctor says he will help her. The doctor then locks the door, and the woman wakes up, appearing nude, and seducing Walter into a night of sex. When he wakes up the next morning, the woman is gone, there is nobody in the house, and the house itself appears to be in ruins. He also has mysterious wounds on his neck.

Walter goes to a nearby cafe, where he picks up a newspaper. The front page of the newspaper alerts Walter to the fact that the beautiful blonde woman was set to be married the next day, and she has been abducted. With his mysterious meeting behind him, Walter spends the remaining running time of the film trying to piece together exactly what happened. Different clues point to the woman being Marie-Ange, Henri de Corinthe's former fiance who died seven years ago. Is the woman a ghost? If the woman who disappeared is a ghost, why are the police still looking for her? While all of this is going on, scenes are repeatedly broken up by Sara Zeitgeist, Walter's boss, riding her motorcycle at night.

La Belle Captive is a brilliantly constructed mystery, begging to be solved by almost every character in the film, as well as by the viewer. It is meticulously elliptical, repeatedly coming back to the same semi-ending (which is even referenced by a character in the film, calling to the fact that it is indeed a film the viewer is watching) in which Walter comes to his demise. Robbe-Grillet drops many clues, some of them add up to something, others just create more confusion.

Watching the film with subtitles is honestly such a eye-opening experience, as it reveals how, for the first time, Robbe-Grillet remains utterly complex while being (somewhat) more accessible than he usually is. Really, the internal logic of the film is easy to access, not half as esoteric as the logic of his films like Eden and After or even Last Year at Marienbad (which he wrote while Resnais directed).

Robbe-Grillet also brilliantly incorporates Magritte like work, which is obviously what inspired the 'novel' that shares a title with this film, as well as the film itself (although, contrary to the DVD case, this is *not* a film adaptation of Robbe-Grillet's own novel, there are similar themes, but the narrative strand is utterly different). Where Magritte used the frame within a frame to construct his 'alternate word' that exists and echoes the real world, Robbe-Grillet uses the technique to add a layer of depth to the alternate 'realities' that are co-existing in the film.

These interior juxtapositions also create a structuralists wet dream; aside from the connective images that flash on screen, Robbe-Grillet takes the theory one step further, emphasizing connections between shots and frames within the frame and in relation to the frame-- in other words, the structural elements of the film are so strong it's virtually impossible to view the film without being completely aware of Robbe-Grillet's desired ideas and themes, yet these juxtapositions are handled so well it never seems heavy- handed.

While many have commented on the film in claims that it exists as a sort of "art-house erotic thriller," in reality Robbe-Grillet retains the same sort of icy disconnect from the "erotica" present on screen as he often does in both his books and other films. There is nudity and sex, but it is approached more as a narrative transition towards something further, less as eye candy or an erotically charged moment. Walter and the possible Marie-Ange's initial sex-scene serves only to further a sort of obsession between the two and to introduce the vampiric markings on Walters neck. Marie-Ange is, as a nude, very enticing, but that's the whole point; she's entrancing the character of Walter, pushing the story forward.

A very interesting element of the story is Robbe-Grillet's subtle approach towards vampirism. The "Marie-Ange" character leaves bite marks on Walter's neck, and when Walter discovers Henri de Corinthe dead, Henri has the marks on his neck too. However, instead of turning into a vampire himself, in the traditional mode of vampirism, the marks simply seem to extend Walter's connection to the vampiric character; Marie-Ange is not 'stealing' Walter's blood, she's 'stealing' his mind by utterly occupying it.

What remains utterly satisfying about the film is that ultimately, it is a simple ghost story between the living and the dead. It is in this aspect that the film attains a humanistic element that is generally ignored in most of Grillet's films. The only aspect of the film that remains unsatisfying to me is the ending, which is a play on the "was it just a dream?" ending that has almost become cliche; yet that I can excuse as it exists as another window into another world; which is what the film repeatedly does over and over again. However, there is a sort of bizarre coda to the film, a voice-over narration while Sara rides her motorcycle, dressed in black leather; commentary on the 'angel of death' that seems bizarrely out of place.

Regardless, overall the film exists as one of Robbe-Grillet's most successful films to date, and it's release on DVD with subtitles is truly something remarkable.

SATAN BOUCHE UN COIN (JEAN-PIERRE BOUYXOU, 1968)

2007-03-21T01:16:00.000-07:00

It's hard to imagine that when Jean-Pierre Bouyxou made Satan bouche un coin he imagined anybody outside of his close friends seeing it. It's a very peculiar film, somewhat amateur, yet carrying the spirit of the films that Bouyxou was more or less renown for supporting- the fantastique, the erotic horror film, the films that most of the critics of the time (and even today) overlooked. And possibly for that specific reason, it exists as a brilliant ten minute film.

The film is a series of images, shown in short takes (anywhere from a few frames to 30 seconds), of more or less fetishistic imagery (something Bouyxou was particularly fond of). After a credit and title sequence written on naked human flesh, the viewer sees the brilliant Molinier standing sanctimoniously in front of a screen. Soon he is joined by a woman, and he fondles her breasts while retaining his signature grin. Molinier seems to almost be the 'ringmaster' of the incidents, with almost every minute episode cutting back to him. His presence is one thing that makes this film remarkable; the same sort of aura that exists in Moliniers famous self-portraits and cut-ups is present here, on screen. The man truly is remarkably charismatic doing little but grinning and standing.

Other images that follow include a nude woman being bathed in blood as she writhes on the ground, a little girl staring in awe and terror, individuals grinning almost maliciously at the camera, a nude man wrestling the head of a statue after he finishes whipping it, and eventually, models of the human body, and fake cadavers. It is these images at the end of the film, the medical diagrams and models, that ultimately bring full circle the age old concept of sex and death. Sex seems to be the theme of the first third of the film, pleasure (indicated mainly by the malicious grins) the second thirds' theme, and then death, the final theme. Taken as a whole the viewer in enveloped in the films atmosphere, left to deal with the implications of what he's just scene.

The film moves at an energetic, jovial pace, and in tone feels very similar (yet almost remarkably darker) than Kenneth Anger's later films like Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome and the more chaotic, interior parts of Lucifer Rising. Another connection can be drawn from Anger's satanic intentions and the "satan" of Bouyxou's films title. Aside from the chaotic array of images, the film is also accompanied by a bizarrely grandiose score, heightening the ecstatic mood. While conceptually, I'm not exactly sure if there is anything deeper than the connective images and aforementioned themes, but that doesn't stop the film from being wildly entertaining to a person like me. Also despite the occasional image being terribly underexposed (of course, the darkness of the image could also be due to the print that I saw), there exist a large number of amazingly composed and memorable images throughout.

As I hope I've implied, the film is actually a remarkable piece of work that is definitely of interest to anybody who thrives off of the decadent, chaotic, and erotic existence of films like those of Jean Rollin, Renato Polselli, or even Kenneth Anger. All in all a very rewarding piece of history.

SURVEY MAP OF A PARADISE LOST (HISAYASU SATO, 1988)

2007-03-18T23:36:00.000-07:00

Hisayasu Sato's brilliant Survey Map of a Paradise Lost is a truly unique film. It approaches many of the themes that run rampant through Sato's work of the time (mans relationship with technology, alienation, emptiness, and sexual disorder) in a method which is completely new, completely different from anything that had been put on celluloid before.

Nukada is a journalist working on a story about "The Banana Club," a telephone sex club in which (presumably) customers call a line and are connected to a woman for phone sex or to arrange a meeting for actual sex. Nukada's coworker Koto knows a girl name Midori, who he offers to set up an interview with for Nukada. The two meet for an interview one day, but before the interview can get under way, a man pulls up in a car, voices how he had an appointment with Midori first, pulls her into the car, and drives off.

The man is Kihara, a twenty-nine year old who works at NDT, a large phone company. He seems to have some sort of affinity for Midori, and also somehow always ends up connecting to her through the phone club. The sex he has with Midori (and for that fact, his wife) is very rough. The woman is tied up and often blood play is involved.

After a rather strenuous sex session, Kihara and Midori go for a walk, ending up on top of a tall building. Midori tells a story about a pop star that killed herself of a building, and how she saw it while she was working in a deli. She remarks how she wants to fall, someday.

Later, Kihara attempts to have sex with his wife. She has developed some sort of psychosomatic itch that she gets when she doesn't take a copious amount of unidentified pills. Her itch begins while they're having sex, but Kihara refuses to let her take the pills. He ties her up and video tapes her as she wriggles around trying to scratch herself. He seems to get some of perverse pleasure out of it, while it pushes his wife over the edge.

Some time later, Kihara picks up Midori again. Against Midori's wishes, Kihara once again brings out the video camera. Midori argues with Kihara, and eventually he pulls a knife out. Midori gets a hold of the knife, and slashes his arm. She scrambles to the bathroom, her feet tied together. Kihara follows with the video camera, grinning. Midori, still clutching the knife, climbs into the full bathtub. Kihara sets the camera tripod down, aiming at the tub, and lunges at Midori. The knife plunges into his chest, killing him.

The incident shows up in the news, and Midori is more or less getting out of the crime by calling it an act of self defense, which the video tape more or less proves. Nukada, aware of the incident, is thrilled when his coworker (the same one who introduced him to Midori) tells him about the existence of the video tape, and then manages to get him a copy. While watching the video tape he notices a few frames of video at the beginning that are not from the night in the love hotel. After freezing the frames Nukada discovers that it is Midori and Kihara's wife talking on top of a roof.

Within the last fifteen minutes of the movie, much is revealed that comes as a shock to the viewer, without revealing the main "punch" of the ending, it's safe to point out that in reality, Kihara was suicidal, but unable to kill himself. He more or less manipulated his wife and Midori into the situation where he knew he could die, and it would simply appear to be an act of self defense from Midori. But the real shock is yet to come.

Sato once again proves he is a master of the subversive, pushing the sex scenes in this film to what is basically the hardest point he could within the context of the film. The extreme violence of the sex scenes fully expand upon the state that Kihara himself is in, and Midori's reactions are perfectly consistent within what is revealed to be her outlook on life.

Sato also handles his fascination of the interaction with technology greatly, with key elements playing out on TV and monitors, slowly being followed by a pan to the actual action; the double view points out to us, as viewers to a) think about our reality versus the reality of the film and b) create a divide in the motivations and actions of the characters themselves in the film. In a brilliant move by Sato, the ultimate reality of the characters, at the end of the film, is revealed through a video cassette.

The revelation of Kihara's suicidal intentions are also linked to technology; Kihara says he has compiled all of his life's data into a computer program, and the program has chosen suicide as the most reasonable and preferable death. This method, aside from commenting on the technology issue, also touches on Kihara's isolation; he puts more faith into a machine than he does in any of his interpersonal relationships (of course; the only relationships we are exposed to are those of Kihara to his wife, Midori, and briefly to Nukada).

Midori also reveals an intense sort of desperation that Sato seems to find in many young characters in his films. She was witness to a pop stars suicide and becomes more or less obsessed with the details and the actual situation (the act of falling, and hitting the ground) itself.

All in all, Survey Map of a Paradise Lost is a very powerful film. It's social commentary and artistic achievements (Sato's world view has always been ahead of it's time) are vast. If one can view sadomasochistic sex not as exploitive titillation and more of a metaphor of the desperation for a final pleasure, then the film is wholly relevant and a great way to spend sixty minutes.

THE EMBRYO HUNTS IN SECRET (KOJI WAKAMATSU, 1966)

2007-02-09T14:33:00.000-08:00

It's ironic that the films of the 60s and 70s steeped in sado-masochism are today relegated to the trash heap by serious film connoisseurs, as most, through the depiction of the relationship and often times quirky dialogue, will rise to the same level of intellectualism as the 'heady' art films of the time. And while it remains true that, through a lack of understanding, many individuals regard the sadomasochistic pinku films of Japan's cinematic golden age as overly misogynistic and worthless, many of these titles well deserve a second look.

Koji Wakamatsu is often considered an enfant-terrible of Japan's studio system early on in his career, and his experiences in the studio affected him so much that he abandoned it all together, financing his films through outside sources so he would have total control over his final product. The Embryo Hunts in Secret, while not as politically charged as many of Wakamatsu's films, retains it's own sense of poetry through it's depiction of a harrowing situation.

The film opens with a man and woman passionately groping each other in a car; outside, it is pouring down rain. The man grabs for the woman's sex, but she denies him the pleasure, insisting that they go inside. The man takes the woman to his apartment. It turns out that the man is the owner of a department store where Yuka, the woman, works in the men's clothing department as a sale girl. The two know little about each other, other than what is knowable from an outsider perspective; they know their power relations in the business, and they know they are attracted to each other.

The woman takes a bath, and after some fairly rough sex, the man starts to ask Yuka fairly personal questions about her own sex. How many men has she done it with before? Is it always 'like this'? Yuka feels uncomfortable answering the questions, but through the mans force she eventually complies with an answer. After the sex the man gives the woman a sleeping pill so she can fall asleep and wake up by 11:30 the next morning; she has a lunch date. While the woman is getting ready for bed, the man comments on how she 'looks just like her,' though at this point in the film we're not sure who it is that Yuka resembles.

Once the woman is in bed and more or less passed out, the man ties her arms and feet to the posts of the bed, and then whips her. While whipping the woman he exclaims commentary on his relationships with all the women formerly in his life; his mother who hung herself after the war, his wife who left him so she could have a baby. The man seems to consider life more or less pain, and it is his goal to teach the woman this, to force her into becoming his wife (as he is still hung up on the wife who abandoned him in order to have a child).

When the woman wakes up the next morning she is appalled to find her body covered in bruises from the whip. The man, in a demeaning gesture, throws 30,000 yen at her and says that it was worth it. The woman rejects the money and begins to leave the apartment, but the man breaks down. He virtually throws himself at her asking her to stay, saying that she can have the apartment for herself, and offering his love. She still rejects the man, so through use of force he gets her back into the bed, where he once again ties her down.

Through an extended period of time the audience is given a window into the arena in which the man is attempting to make Yuka his slave, his 'dog.' He rewards her with food and water when she behaves, and punishes her with the whip when she doesn't. All the while still recounting his family relationship, his oedipal relationship with his mother, and his estranged relationship with his wife, all at the cost of his utter rejection of a child.

Time passes and the woman seems to be becoming more and more passive, but in actually, once the man lets his guard down, Yuka gets her revenge, coming out on top.

The film is very claustrophobic, set entirely in the man's apartment, with the only characters being the man and the woman themselves, with occasional flashbacks of the man's wife (who may very well be the same actress playing Yuka) and a brief flash of his mother. Such claustrophobia severely helps in extending the severe atmosphere in which the two characters are existing.

Returning to a comment I made at the beginning of this review, Wakamatsu imbues a large amount of poetry into this claustrophobic nightmare. The first bold move Wakamatsu makes is using a classical score to back the action, creating an awkward sort of tension that mirrors the dichotic state of the male protagonist. At one moment the man will be viciously torturing the girl, the next crying in her lap while he reminisces on his past. The dialogue is also beautiful at times, intensely focused, the viewer gets the opinion that the man has no other thoughts entering his head outside of his entire warped view of birth and the female gender. The beauty of the dialogue stems from the fact that the man's thought process borders on the metaphysical at time, approaching abstract concepts in relation to what he needs things to add up to.

As usual for a Wakamatsu film, the cinematography and level of experimentation is full force. The stark black and white photography will segue into bleached out whites to indicate the passing of time, Wakamatsu will hold freeze-frames at specifically relevant climactic moments, and during one scene the audio is dropped completely while the viewer watched the woman screaming in pain. It all adds up to a unique vision of the utterly claustrophobic world view; everything that exists within the frame is consistent.

Another thing to comment on is that a majority of other reviews available on the internet of the film were written by non- Japanese speaking individuals who watched the film without subtitles. This tends to lead to an interpretation that the man and woman in the flashback scenes are not the business man and his wife, but rather the business man's father and mother. This is important to note, as if that were the case the film would lend itself to falling back on the old "runs-in-the-family" excuse that relates to spousal abuse, which isn't half as complicated (and expressively more cliched) as what is actually occurring in Wakamatsu's film.

Also, as a strike against those who accuse this film (or even pinku films in general), it is very obvious, as the film plays out, that the woman is the one who's in control of the man. All of the man's actions are directly related to his response, and obsession, with Yuka, and even women in general. And in the ending, in a far more complicated manner than a straight-forward revenge flick, Yuka does get a form of "revenge," but it's not so much of 'revenge,' per se, as it's really more of a metaphorical 'return to the womb' (in direct connection to the embryo of the films title) for the man. The woman has enveloped this man who was trying to use his obsession to control her.

While being a remarkable film in itself, it helped Wakamatsu pave the way to his further, more developed and important films such as 1967's Violated Angels and what could be considered his masterpiece (in regards to stylistics and character depiction), 1969's Go Go Second Time Virgin. There are not many of Wakamatsu's films available with English options, but as the number increases, it's more and more possible to view Wakamatsu as the genius auteur that he really was.

DON'T DELIVER US FROM EVIL (JOEL SERIA, 1971)

2007-02-01T17:02:00.000-08:00

Anne and Lore are two barely pubescent teens who attend a Catholic Boarding school. While seeming sweet, well behaved, and innocent from all appearances, the two have actually devoted themselves to Satan. While they are at school, the two intentionally 'sin' as often as possible without getting caught. They steal clothing and religious reliquaries in order to use in future Satanic rituals, the confess sins which they haven't committed, they spy on the nuns, and they read transgressive literature under their covers once everybody else is asleep. Their life at the boarding school is a constant joke to them, and they giggle at everybody else's misfortunes and the fact they are getting away with so much sin. Once summer break comes, their activities begin to get a little more serious.

Anne's parents are leaving the town for two months, and leaving Anne, who's fourteen years old, home alone at the chateau she lives at. While a gardener and butler are there, Anne is more or less left to her own devices. They start out by tormenting an ignorant farmer, tempting him with their bodies, and then letting his cows free once he's gone out of his mind with lust. Later the two end up setting the hay around his farm on fire, reveling in the destruction they're causing. They also constantly commit acts against Anne's gardener, killing all of his pet birds, one at a time, since the gardener loves them. Among their other "sins" that they revel in, the time finally comes to dedicate their lives to Satan.

The ceremony resembles a Catholic mass, with the difference being that the girls are dedicating their lives to Satan instead of a Judeo-Christian God. They prick their fingers and put each others blood on their tongues before taking a Eucharist. They then have the gardener take them out in a boat on a nearby lake, and the girls eventually push him off the boat, eventually falling in themselves. Once all on land, the gardener, who appears to suffer from some sort of mental deficit, chases the girls around the forest as they laugh and continue to make fun of him.

One night, while riding their bikes through the woods, they encounter a man who's car has run out of gas. The next village is over five miles away, so the girls invite them back to the guests house at the chateau which they have cleaned up and decorated. Once there, the girls strip to their underwear and constantly tease the man about marriage, his potency as a lover, all the while coming onto him and showing off their legs. When Anne leaves the room to go get more wood for the fire, the man snaps and attempts to rape Lore. Coming back inside, Anne tries to wrestle the man off of Lore, but he won't budge. She picks up one of the logs of fire wood and hits him over the head. He falls off of Lore, and much to the girls dismay, dies. They wrap his body up in carpet and dump him in the river, swearing not to talk about it. Anne's parents come back the next day, and the day after that the girls go back to school.

Once back at school the girls are extremely worried about being caught, Lore especially. Anne comforts Lore, promising that they won't find the body. Shortly thereafter a police man comes and interviews the two girls, he is obviously suspicious. Anne is mentally preparing herself for their demise while still comforting Lore that everything will work out OK. Finally, during a school play, Lore and Anne, with an audience of all of the staff of the school and almost all of the student's parents, stage an amazing spectacle that takes care of almost all of their problems. The ending of the film is truly amazing, and fits perfectly with the bizarre tone of the film up to that point.

The film is very unique in the fact that, despite utterly exploitative subject matter, the method in which first-time director Seria handles the content is utterly subversive. While the girls do gladly parade their nubile bodies, and the camera ostensibly lingers on them, during any of the scenes of rape, a very disconcerting tone is taken, and it is obvious that the girls aren't very happy with practicing what they preach. While some of the film carries a sort of naive eroticism, the "sex" scenes themselves are completely divorced from eroticism, rather taking a stark position of confusion and dread.

Almost the same thing could be said about the tone of the entire film itself, which creates a bizarre sort of disconnect from the events on screen. As Anne and Lore commit their mean-spirited deeds the audience is rarely allowed a chance to pass judgment. Almost all the way through, these scenes of the girl's evil are followed immediately by brightly lit, enjoyable scenes of the girls laughing and acting like normal teen girls. This sort of ironic dichotomy perfectly sums up the idea of two early teenage girls dabbling with Satanism; despite their desire for devotion to it, they have no concept of what they're actually doing.

It'd be possible to view the film as somewhat nihilistic, as the ideology of the girls is at the surface level unrelenting, but if one examines the girls during other aspects of their life (which the film allows ample opportunities to do), it really is obvious that these girls are not half as serious as they let themselves believe to be. Any events of serious consequence are more or less an accident, or an misunderstanding of what the consequence seriously is. In fact, in a scene where Anne is by herself in her gardeners room, she picks up the last pet bird of the gardener, and crushes it in her fist. For the first time in the film Anne's maniacal stoicism fades, and she is overwhelmed with guilt (or something), running to the chapel in her chateau, sobbing to God.

It's in this approach to the film that it succeeds, for Seria has created believable teenage Satanists. They are not the hyper-unrealistic teenagers that overpopulate much of European genre cinema, performing deeds for purely exploitative purposes (aka so the audience has something to respond to on a rather shallow level), rather, they actually exist, in the film, as humans. The presence of characterization allows for the audience to get a fuller emotive response from the film, moreso than any other "naughty teen girl" flick from the same time period.

Also, a final word needs to be said in regards to the ending. While I won't give it away (part of it's power comes from the unexpected viewing of it), it needs to be said that it is utterly hypnotic and chilling, a perfect ending to a film which early on has its protagonists reading Lautremont's Les Chants de Maldoror. It is very poetic, theatrical (even without the framing of a school play it would be read that way), and utterly conclusive.