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The 27th Seattle International Film Festival
feature by Carrie
Gorringe, 22 June 2001
In the twenty-seventh go-around to what has
become the yearly excuse to gorge oneself silly on great cinema, unhealthy junk
food and an even more unhealthy schedule, the Seattle International Film
Festival was, despite its high-powered premiere of The Breakfast Party (complete
with directors/stars Alan Cummings and Jennifer Jason Leigh in attendance), had
a more low-key atmosphere than in past years. Yes, there were always
intermittent sightings of the SIFF staff members, braving out yet another
twenty-some-odd days with their usual polished vigor, and toothpicks propping
their eyes open by the end. The only one who remained standing, both mentally
and physically, during the last four days of the festival was Quentin Tarantino,
whose enthusiastic four-part retrospective of B-movie director William Whitney's
oeuvre served as a springboard from which to rescue the reputation
of the "Sam Peckinpah of Gower Gulch" from what Tarantino believes to
be unjustified obscurity. (Whitney was a typical workhorse director, whose
versatile skill set took him from 1940's serials, such as Heroes of the
Fighting Legion, to Roy Rogers films, to TV and, incredibly, to'70s
Blaxploitation films). Jean-Jacques Beineix's own cinematic retrospective was an
unqualified hit; a single screening of his 1981 film, Diva, overwhelmed
its audience to the extent that the members wanted to nominate it for the Best
Picture award (the film was disqualified because it wasn't a new release). Or
maybe Tarantino wasn't the only cinema fanatic who never buckled under the
pressure of five to six screenings per day over twenty-four days; one could
overhear an anonymous full-series pass holder who, while standing in line with a
friend, confesses rather sheepishly that he had seen "only" 200 films
(!), and his wasn't a singular case. Still, even with all of this stardom and
frenetic activity within reach, everything still seemed more quiet, probably
because the pockets of craziness were avoidable (i.e. self-inflicted) -- or
maybe that's an observation clouded by nostalgia for a time when all a writer
had to do was watch and not think, knowing the day of reckoning (i.e., actually
writing the report) could be put off just a little while longer. It's now
"no longer": here's a (very) brief sampling of this year's SIFF.
The Archival Series at this year's SIFF
included a newly-restored print, of Budd Boetticher's 1956 Western, Seven Men
From Now. One of many Westerns that Boetticher made during the '50s, the
film was considered one of those "lost classics"; it received
additional cachet from its status as one of the favorite films of the French New
Wave directors . Not only was the film lost, there was probably also another
problem facing those who searched for a workable print: the film had been shot
in Warnercolor, which was one of those tri-pack offshoots of Eastmancolor -- a
poor-studio's version of Technicolor prone to fading after thirty years or so --
and there was a distinct possibility that, even if a print was available, there
might not have been much to salvage. Now, courtesy of the always meticulous UCLA
Film and Television Archive, we can all see what excited the New Wave.
In describing the content of Seven Men,
the SIFF catalog is reluctant to give many details about the film, on the
grounds that revelation will taint the audience's first encounter with it. Since
the film is considered to be one of those that changed the narrative course of
Western films altogether, one should see it with a fresh mind. The basic story
covers the interactions and tensions between a former sheriff (Randolph Scott),
a cold-blooded but sly and charming outlaw (Lee Marvin), six other men, memories
of the sheriff's dead wife, and the ordeals, personal and otherwise, of a wagon
train couple heading west as fast as possible -- and that's all that anyone
really needs to know. In many ways, Seven Men isn't all that radical a
film within its context; it borrows many changes in sensibilities from the
Anthony Mann/James Stewart collaborations (Winchester '73, Broken
Arrow, et al.), and, of course, High Noon, films in which moral
divisions shift from absolute good-and-evil to those that are more ambiguous and
opaque. What pushes Seven Men out front is Burt Kennedy's witty script;
it unabashedly makes the shift from absolutism to ambiguity through constant
layering of sly humor into most of the proceedings; instead of the single dose
of humor double entendre uttered at the end of Shane by the
young Brandon de Wilde as he entreats the hero to return ("Mother wants
you."), the audience gets:
"Silver Spring and Mr. Stride have a few
uncomfortable associations."
"I'd hate to have to kill you."
"I'd hate to have you have to try."
The overripe dialogue might seem trite by
contemporary standards, but it was bracing for its time, because of the way in
which it blurs the strictly-demarcated lines between "good" and
"bad" character, expressing a barely-concealed contempt for false,
"proper" ending, particularly in the hastily-imposed ending that was
probably meant to appease the Hays Office; all the surviving characters don't
comfortably accept the fate imposed upon them by the script. Seven Men is
the beginning of a phase that might be considered Westerns for Adults, including
Sam Peckinpah's 1962 classic Ride the High Country (also with Randolph
Scott) before culminating in Peckinpah's nihilistic elegy, The Wild Bunch.
Aside from the film's pure entertainment value, Seven Men From Now is a
valuable (re)addition to cinema history.
Out of the Closet, Off Screen: The William
Haines Story is another documentary
from director/producers Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato who, at last year's
SIFF, taught us all to love Evangelical Christianity after Tammy Faye Bakker
plastered it with a ton of goofy tolerance and mascara (The Eyes of Tammy
Faye). This time, their subject involves a different sort of plaster:
William Haines (1900-1973) was, and still is, considered to be one of the
preeminent interior designers of the twentieth century, one of the first to
combine traditional with modern furniture styles. Carole Lombard, Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis, and the US Ambassador to London Walter Annenberg chose Haines
as their decorator, and his own talents brought him a prestige that put him on
nearly equal footing in terms of prestige in his relationships with his clients
(he was commissioned by Annenberg to redecorate the American Embassy).
Prior to 1933, Haines had already achieved
renown in another aesthetic medium, an achievement that has been mostly
remaindered to the archives until recently. In 1930, William ("Billy")
Haines was the top-grossing movie actor of his time, noted for his good looks
and his wit. By 1934, Haines was out of the movie business for good, courtesy of
the orders handed down by his boss, MGM studio chief L.B. Mayer. Haines had one
serious, irremediable problem in Mayer's eyes: he was openly gay, refusing to
give up his long-time lover and to enter into a "lavender marriage",
as many of his fellow actors and actresses did in order to keep their true
sexual orientations to themselves. He was, therefore, a potential lightning rod
for a studio that could ill afford to antagonize all the blue-nosed types who
were the driving force behind the enactment of the extremist Production Code,
which had assumed complete control over the censorship board formerly known as
the Hays Office by July 1934 [under the terms of the new diktat,
those films which were made prior to that date, and which could not be censored
to fit the new "format" without losing all narrative logic, or those
with so-called "undesirable" themes, were simply obliged to rot in the
studio vaults -- and so did Haines' career]. Fortunately, Haines's closest
friend, Joan Crawford, fearlessly sponsored his shift from screen star to star
decorator, acting as his life preserver when changing moral standards and
Haines' own misjudgments (the El Porto scandal of 1936) threatened to send him
into poverty (Crawford's daughter Christina -- she of the wire coat hangers --
notes that Joan "was a lousy mother but a great friend"). So, Haines'
story had the typical happy Hollywood ending in his personal as well as his
professional life: he and his lover remained together for nearly fifty years.
Or, at least, this (or most of it) is the way
it is presented in the forty-four-minute running length allotted to Bailey and
Barbato by the documentary's sponsor, the American Movie Classics cable channel.
The film moves in a pithy, breezy style -- one that is too breezy and far too
pithy. The book on which the film is based (William J. Mann's Wisecracker:
The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood's First Openly Gay Star) is
approximately 500 pages long, and too much of Haines' life ends up, ironically
enough, being repressed in the name of time constraint. More puzzling is the
film's apparent lack of focus on Haines' post-Hollywood career: it suggests a
real discomfort with the (potentially stereotypical) concept of a gay interior
decorator, however acclaimed he might have been. But the worst element of all is
the filmmakers' attempt to make Haines into a gay martyr-turned-gay-icon. The
title of his book notwithstanding, Mann unequivocally stated that Haines always
denied his connection to any sort of gay "lifestyle". Put simply,
Haines knew that his sexual orientation was a non-shameful, integral part of his
personality, and didn't feel that there was a need either to publicize or deny
his sexual orientation; in fact, Haines resisted any attempts to link himself
with a gay political movement, pre- or post-Stonewall, finding the idea somewhat
silly and superfluous. These facts eviscerate the film's central thesis; those
who know nothing about Haines' life will come away from a screening of this
documentary with a distorted view of the truth.
Actor/director Tim Blake Nelson (credits here)
brought his latest film, O, to SIFF for its premiere. Essentially a
retelling of Othello set in the grounds of a prep school in South
Carolina, Nelson makes the film relevant to modern (mostly teenage) audiences by
filling the traditional roles with actors whose names are familiar to those who
are familiar with films like I Saw What You Did Last Summer and 10
Things I Hate About You. Julia Stiles is Desi, the daughter of the school's
dean, desperately in love with Odin (Mehki Phifer), star of the school's
basketball team, and a scholarship student desperate to get out of the inner
city. Not surprisingly, the team's coach (Martin Sheen, in yet another
overwrought performance) loves Odin because of the fame he promises to bring
upon the school and upon its sports program: in a public display of affection
during the presentation of an MVP award to Odin, Coach Goulding breaks down and
declares that he loves Odin "like he was my own son", especially since
he doesn't have a high opinion of his own: for son Hugo (Josh Hartnett), Coach
Goulding reserves only scorn and criticism. When Odin mistakenly makes an
innocent comment that Hugo interprets to be a personal slight, all of his
tightly and deeply-suppressed jealousy coalesces around and into an elaborate
plan to destroy Odin. Inexplicably, Coach Goulding makes the task easier by
appointing Hugo to "take care" of Odin. Take care of him Hugo does. As
with Iago, the method of execution is death by the slow-acting poison of
slander, innuendo and lies, and threatens everyone, from Desi's roommate Emily
(Rain Phoenix), the school's rich scapegoat (Elden Henson), to Odin's closest
friend, Michael Casio (Andrew Keegan). Presumably this is supposed to be
interpreted as a more contemporary and provocative interpretation of Othello.
Instead, and paradoxically, O is a film which is devoid of emotion. Only
the most skillful directors and actors can transform Othello from a
simple plot of hubris and jealousy leading inevitably to doom into a play of
psychological significance, through their interactions, gestures, etc. O,
on the other hand, relies too heavily upon the basic storyline and not enough on
the necessary dramatic extras. The ending of the film is, as expected, shocking
and violent, but the film's presumed focal point -- of a young inner-city youth
fighting to adapt and survive in an upper-class white world -- is presented in
too facile a manner, and it wastes the talents of Phifer in particular (who
first came to prominence, and demonstrated promise, in Spike Lee's Clockers).
As the dramatic centerpiece, he has to carry the film, but he is too weighted
down to make the enterprise convincing, and Phifer is then obliged to play out
this stereotypical role, with the usual accoutrements -- drug problems,
white/black tensions, etc. -- within this equally facile structure; as a result,
both O's characterization and the film seem forced.
It should also be noted that the release of O
was delayed by its distributor (Lions Gate Films) because of concerns over
memories of the massacre at Columbine High School and the fear that audiences
might draw uncomfortable analogies between the film and the incident. This noble
exercise, however, was quite irrelevant; after the Shakespearian plot is trimmed
back, it becomes apparent, upon examination, that any attempts to draw an
analogy between the manipulation of the popular and talented Odin and the
carefully-plotted revenge fantasies of two socially-dispossessed teens can be
only nominally successful at best, further weakening the case for turning O
into a showcase for contemporary social concerns. Director Nelson and his cast
strain earnestly to attain this goal, but strain, and not accomplishment, is the
final impression the film leaves behind.
Benny Chan's Gen-X Cops moves at an
unrelentingly madcap pace, even by the standards of most Chop Socky specials,
mixing Hong Kong police with Japanese mob leaders and their Hong Kong middlemen,
with a larger-than-normal injection of black humor for good measure. Throw in
lots of immaculately choreographed action sequences -- complete with a great big
helping of breathtaking high-angle shots, a script in which the hackneyed
dialogue ("You guys are the ones who keep screwing things up!")
switches from English to Japanese to Chinese, sometimes within the same
sentence, three police-school rejectees who combine a surfer-dude mentality with
great high kicks, and you have a manically entertaining 112-minute package. The
euphemistic difference between what the actors say in English and what actually
appears on the subtitles is one of the more inadvertently funny aspects of the
film. As a topper, co-producer Jackie Chan makes a cameo appearance to add that
extra touch of tongue-in-cheek to the proceedings. Gen-X Cops is action
cinema at the pinnacle, a "Rollerball" popcorn delight.
At the other end of the gangster film is the
extremely disappointing 6ixtynin9 from Thailand. It's the story of a
mousy secretary named Tum with an obsession for the late Princess of Wales who
has just been laid off from her secretarial position at a large bank. Facing not
only humiliation but the inability to support her family living out in the
countryside, she wakes up one morning to find a box containing a million bhat
outside her door. Unfortunately, and unknown to her, the money was
delivered to her door as a result of a humorous error: It's the proceeds from a
crooked boxing match, and the two competing gang leaders think that the other
one is lying to him about the money's location. While Tum struggles with her
conscience over what to do with the money, members from one of the gang show up
at her door and try to intimidate her. Two murders later, the madness begins
piling up as fast as the bodies do in Tum's studio apartment. However, what
seems at first to be a blackly-comic lark degenerates in the last five minutes
into a lachrymose "meditation" on the deeper meaning of honesty and
life, or what have you. More accurately, the film begins to lose its pace during
the last twenty minutes, as the heroine finally seems to be jettisoning the more
annoying traits of her personality but the storyline becomes slack. The obvious
payoff at the end doesn't occur; instead, the audience is told, via a title card
that when God gives you a gift, he also gives you a whip. Grafting half-realized
metaphorical claptrap onto the end of what was supposed to be a no-nonsense
thriller makes the whole thing seem preposterous; its simplistic morality places
the entire film the film beyond salvage. Had the filmmakers been fearless enough
to let the ending take a more inevitable turn, the film could have become a
deeply satirical take on the varying, and deceptive, manifestations of human
greed -- a turn which, unfortunately, was not chosen.
"So today's lesson is…you kill each
other off till there's no one left", chirps a cute and giggly instructor to
a room full of terrified Japanese seventh graders, and, no, she's not indulging
in figurative speech here. Battle Royale is a no-holds-barred satire that
underscores the real meaning of personal challenge. The film is set in some
indeterminate future period in what is now a fascist Japan. There's 15%
unemployment, youth have taken to the streets in full revolt and the government
has come up with a means of conducting what amounts to a chilling process of
elimination for all these hormone-infested troublemakers. Students are
arbitrarily selected and, under the premise of a field trip, hijacked and taken
to a remote island, ten kilometers wide, where they will play out this
unequivocal version of survival of the fittest under the direction of their
teacher (in this case, Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, a.k.a. "The Man
With One Facial Expression", director/star of another SIFF feature, the
violent and uneven Brother). Armed with an expedition kit arbitrarily
equipped with anything from a machete to cooking pots, each student must use
ingenuity to kill his or her way into a position of increasing strength until
only one of them is left standing. Any attempts to evade the rules will result
in immediate death, since the students are under constant surveillance and are
rigged with explosive "necklaces" which will detonate upon orders from
those controlling the game -- and it's all broadcast live, for your viewing
pleasure. At the conclusion of the previously noted, peppy homicide-o-mercial,
and the immediate killing of two juvenile spoilsports who refuse to cooperate,
the film then becomes a fascinating, if familiar, examination of psychology
under pressure: whose wills will bend either to committing murder or suicide,
which ones will form or betray alliances, etc. The actors keep the madness
humming along convincingly, and director Kinji Fukasaku aptly captures the
madness not only of politics (the evocation of a fascist Japan being an
all-too-chilling reminder of recent Japanese history) but also, for the most
part, the role of voyeurism as a political statement: is watching an innocent
activity, or does it tacitly strengthen political corruption? It's just
something to think about the next time you watch Survivor.
The latest film (the seventy-forth) from
Japanese filmmaker Kon Ichikawa (director of The 8-Tomb Village, The
Burmese Harp, et al.) returns with a film that ranks within the realm of the
Asian action film, but as a more contemplative member. Dora-Heita depicts
what can best be described as the antics of a rebel magistrate (Koji Yakusho)
who is entrusted with the task of having to clean up a corrupt district, one at
which other magistrates have failed badly, and it's no wonder: it's difficult to
find anyone who's either not on the take, or not engaged in some form of covert
betrayal against another. To make the situation more improbable, the new
magistrate seems, from all appearances, to be no better than the people he's
trying to restrain, carousing until all hours, breaking all the local laws, and
doing so with a sardonic insouciance. Even the local bureaucrats are bemused;
having seen successive magistrates fail at the same task, and having expected
better results this time they record the daily lack of progress as if it were
part of a ritual of disillusionment.
If the whole affair of the gunslinger having to
go and clean up this here town sounds seems similar to the goings-on in Akira
Kurosawa's Yojimbo, it might help to know that Kurosawa was one of four
screenwriters who conceived the project as part of a 1960s film collective; as
the sole survivor, Ichikawa made the film as a tribute to his three colleagues.
The film is less laconic in feel than Yojimbo, in part because of
Yakusho's crazy-as-a-fox performance, and the subtle yet constant plot twists;
until the very end of the film, even the audience finds it difficult to know
Dora-Heita's true motives, thus creating an unrelenting edge-of-the-seat
atmosphere. Dora-Heita is an affectionate tribute to the Japanese
cinematic past plumped up with a great deal of irreverent humor, a refreshing
diversion from Hollywood's action offerings.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa, who was honored as an
Emerging Master at the 2001 SIFF, came with his 1997 breakthrough film, Cure
(Kyua). Cure is less a murder mystery (though it does deal
with the murder of a prostitute) than it is a relative of the psychological
horror films from the Robert Siodmak school of filmmaking (think of his 1942
horror classic Cat People), one in which imagery mirrors the internal
tensions of the characters. Kurosawa fills the screen with bloody images, in
this case, the work of a killer whose homicidal trademark is an "X"
slashed across the throat and chest of his victims. Once you see past the blood,
however, composition and psychology become paramount. Hospital and interrogation
rooms become carefully (one might even say artfully) arranged still lifes within
which immaculate, almost sterile, stylization acts is buoyed by emotional
intensity (here Kurosawa, like other Japanese filmmakers before him, has
borrowed extensively from sixteenth-century Kabuki performances as
well as the Zen doctrine of mu, which, roughly speaking, states
that the spaces existing between the materials that constitute a work of art are
more than mere empty space between artistic elements: they are also artistic
elements). The identity of the likely suspect is revealed within the first forty
minutes, but the real suspense is no longer centered in the film's plot as much
as in the attempts by the characters and the audience to ascertain the real from
the fantastic; static camera work -- one of the characteristics of mu
influences in Japanese cinema -- forces the audience to contemplate what's off
screen as well as on, thus keeping everything off balance and contributing to
the suspense. References to Anton Mesmer, the discoverer of hypnosis, also play
into the sense of a world dominated by otherworldly forces. Without revealing
too much, there's a showdown between the killer and an increasingly imbalanced
detective that rivals the infamous swimming-pool scene in Cat People for
suspense and terror. Cure is a film that leaves you dripping in emotional
sweat, both for the intensity of its imagery and its brilliant pacing and script.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa's most recent film, Séance
(Ko-Rei) is also a psychological mystery, in the mold of his
best-known film, Cure. It begins as a standard detective story -- an
attempt by police to solve the mystery of a young girl's kidnapping. In their
search for the girl, the police call upon the mousy but ambitious psychic Junco
(Jan Fubuki) to provide them with direction, without realizing that the source
of Junco's clues may not be traced to her talents alone. Through a series of
bizarrely ironic plot twists, the film's tone ever so gradually devolves into
ever increasing horror, not only at the ingenuity with which human beings
conceal their worst personality traits until a stressful and/or profitable
situation comes their way, but also at the callousness they display in order to
play it to their best advantage. Adapted from Mark McShane's novel, Séance
on a Wet Afternoon, Séance is a chilling and elegant study in the
art of deftly playing with audience expectations, and how people play with the
lives of others.
Lukas Moodyson's film Together (Tillsammans)
is a dramedy chronicling the psychological evolution of a loosely-interrelated
group of people in 1975 Sweden. Seeking refuge from a loutish husband, mother
Elisabeth moves herself and her two children into the communal home of her
brother, Goran, and his group of self-professed "open-minded" thinkers
for what is supposed to be a temporary stay. Proclaiming their adherence to a
radical break with traditional forms of relationships and beliefs, the commune
dwellers discover that their oatmeal-and-vegetarian lifestyle is about to have
its very ideological foundations tested. Likewise, Elisabeth and the children
don't remain unaffected by their new environment. Director/screenwriter Moodyson
(Show Me Love) intricately constructs a world in which chaos generates
both hilarity and sorrow, often at the same time. The tone of the film could be
described as playfully trenchant, as Moodyson does not hesitate to take on the
pretensions of every character, from communards whose rhetoric amounts to little
more than radical-chic posturing (the revolutionary posters on the living-room
walls and a psychedelically-painted VW van parked at the neatly-trimmed curb of
a middle-class neighborhood are only the most obvious evidence) The middle
class, however, isn't free from Moodyson's jaundiced view: there is a neighbor
whose surveillance of those next door is spurred less by moral vigilance than by
prurience. Then there's the high emotional price paid by children who are
subjected to an unremitting stream of adults who are so self indulgent that the
difference between themselves and the children is the greater number of
opportunities for evading responsibility. This being a film about what it was
like to experience the final death throes of '60s radicalism, the audience works
through the typical themes common to reexaminations of this era, such as love
never being emotionally free, human nature always trumping the supposed purity
of ideology, etc. In the hands of a less skillful cast and director, these
themes could themselves seem like little more than simplistic conclusions sent
out to attack complicated social issues but Moodyson distributes his
deftly-aimed barbs with ease, fusing the often present slapstick satire with
fully-formed characters; they're still endearing even when their
emotional/political blinders obscure their faculties the most. Together
might best be defined as a film that delineates the beginning of an era when Che
Guevara gave way to Pottery Barn as the source for decorating inspiration within
a particular subset of radicals as the sixties and the seventies gave way to
more pragmatic considerations (watching the wrenching emotional experiences of
the characters, as they grapple with historical and psychological change, it's
no wonder Moodyson chose ABBA's "S.O.S." as the film's theme song).
O Fantasma (Phantom) is
the debut film of Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues, a nominee for the
Golden Lion award at this year's Venice Film Festival, and one of the most
inexplicable films released this year, for all of the wrong reasons. It is
ostensibly an examination of the maniacal and obsessive sexuality of Sergio, a
gay sanitation worker who, in between countless flings with anonymous partners
in public restrooms and his own squalid rooms, develops an unrequited lust for a
middle-class man with a black Suzuki motorcycle. Meanwhile, he has to fend off
the unwanted advances of a fellow employee and the fists of her jealous
boyfriend. The title of the film is probably derived as much from the film's
gloomy and obscure cinematography that makes incidents and characters
indistinguishable from each other (inexcusable on even an artistic level, even
though the film was shot entirely at night), as from the symbolic rubber S&M
suit Sergio wears exclusively during the final sequences. Despite the film's
(presumably daring) graphic displays of gay oral-genital activity, the film is,
on balance, really more silly than daring; the idea that anyone could spend
ninety minutes contemplating the mindless antics of a fifth-rate Nietzschean
twit like Sergio, is, perhaps the most repugnant aspect of this film -- unless
you consider how the film, despite its "serious" symbolism, represents
nothing more than a leering admiration for gay men who prey upon each other, and
the "artistic" possibilities in this reduction of all possible
expressions of homosexuality to the most debased form possible. Now, that's
pornographic.
"The more you screw, the less you think,
and the better you sleep." This quotation (or is it a manifesto?) has
become the infamous tag line for the latest censorship cause célèbre
known as Baise-moi ("Screw me"). It's the story
of two women, a prostitute named Nadine (Karen Bach) and a porn star named Manu
(Raffaëla Anderson) who have decided that they are as mad as hell and aren't
going to take it anymore. After Manu has been viciously raped, and both have
offed individuals each has found to be particularly irritating, their accidental
meeting in a Paris subway stop becomes the impetus for their sudden
transformation into spree killers; since Nadine has to fulfill an obligation to
deliver some drugs for a friend, they might as well have some fun along the way,
and make a little money in the process. Their murderous urges and activities are
paralleled in the sexual realm as well. Both of these aspects are graphically --
and relentlessly -- depicted by co-directors Virginie Despentes and Coralie
Trinh Thi, as adapted from Despentes' 1995 novel. Despite a gruesome rape scene
straight out of Hubert Selby that initiates all of the ensuing mayhem, Manu and
Nadine are far from being helpless victims attempting to liberate themselves
from male victimization; more often than not, they, unlike their supposed
American counterparts, are the victimizers. The urge to cast them as Gallic
versions of Thelma and Louise has been, for some commentators, tantalizing
beyond the point of resistance, but these women have no personality or sense of
motivation that extends beyond the reptilian. Despite many attempts to translate
the verb in the film's title as "rape" rather than "screw",
and the characters' occupations in the French sex industry, there is nothing
that would suggest a masochistic streak in either one of the women -- and maybe
that's the most discomfiting fact of all; it's difficult to paper over
unadulterated sociopathy, as played out by women, through bait-and-switch
semantics). The film gives microscopic indications of possible prior abuse, but
any indications are quickly brushed aside by the film's obligation to get the
sexual-homicidal nexus rolling again (Trinh Thi's background as a porn director
ensures that the "action" moves at a pace that's both maniacal and
monotonous; by the end of the film, it's hard to tell whether you've been hit by
a truck or bored senseless). In sum, it's less a provocative attempt to document
what some might call the "subversive" aspects of femininity than just
a further illustration of the unintended consequences of cries for censorship:
the attempts result in too much undeserved publicity.
Other great films on hand this year included
Terry Zwigoff's Ghost World (continuing his foray into cult comics that
began with Crumb), the restored version of Luis Buñuel's Diary of a
Chambermaid, Caroline Vignal's bittersweet coming-of-age drama, The Other
Girls -- the list seems almost endless. So, the list will end right here.
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