As the film beginning a run of mid-period Almodóvar vehicles which, while interesting, were more problematic than the dark intensity of his earlier works but hadn’t yet developed the majesty and emotional kick of his finest later films (the trilogy comprising Todo sobre mi madre, Hable con ella & La mala educación), I wasn’t expecting particularly much from TL (particularly given the cold critical reception it initially received). Mistake!
The Almodóvar trademarks are there – the gorgeous design and vivid colour (in Almodóvar’s universe, the perfect interiors provide the ideal contrast to the messiness of human relationships, emotions and the body), as well as stunning lead performances by two notable Almodóvariennes, Victoria Abril & Marisa Paredes. Like his other films, TL quotes the classic female melodramas so adored by Almodóvar (in particular, here, Bergman’s Autumn Sonata), and echoes the narrative of such works, inflected through a sensibility which turns the transgression, sexuality and queer knobs up past ten.
The plot concerns the troubled relationship between Rebeca (Abril), a newscaster, and her mother Becky (Paredes) who is returning to Spain after fifteen years in Mexico (the Spanish title, Tacones Lejanos, translates as ‘distant heels,’ capturing the melancholy of this relationship in referencing Rebeca’s childhood memory of her mother’s presence, rather than the more comedy-oriented nature of the English title). In the meantime, Rebeca has married Manuel (Féodor Atkine), once a lover of her mother’s, and become close friends with a drag queen, Letal (Miguel Bosé), who pastiches Becky’s 60s persona. And when Manuel is murdered, things take a turn for the even-more-complicated, leading to the unraveling of facades within facades, an exploration of history and identity in terms of surface and reality (not to mention celebrity), delivered with the hysterical emotional lability which is also an Almodóvarian hallmark.
Unlike some of his other works, this narrative is compelling and never drags – a particularly impressive feature is the Rashomonesque untangling of Miguel’s murder – a theme which ties in to the central question of appearance and reality in world as hyper-real as its décor, where characters are ‘larger than life’ in the sense that their identity is lived out through stage or screen personas, and where events gain emotional reality and even truth status (only) by their enactment in such venues. Oh, and just in case there weren’t enough exploitative elements here, there are a number of set pieces (including a bizarre but strangely fitting choregraphed dance piece) set in a women’s prison. But here we can contrast Kika, Almodóvar’s next work – where Kika takes the (prescient) exploration of ‘reality’ and truth on the screen, as well as acts of cruelty and transgression, to absurd extremes in ways which, while intriguing, fail inasmuch as they betray a callous insensitivity to human emotions, TL walks this tightrope much more successfully. The soundtrack, which features various divas of the Spanish musical world and at times becomes powerfully diegetic, is also particularly strong, comparable only to Todo sobre mi madre, while the score, composed by Ryuichi Sakamoto, works well within this context (despite Almodóvar’s expression of dislike for it).
If there is a weak point, it is the performance of Bosé as the male lead – his casting was apparently a cause célèbre given his status as a famous Spanish-language singer, but his acting and indeed his ‘look’ seem stilted and banal, out of place in the lush and vivid environment of the film, while his transformation into various personas as the film progresses is obvious in a way which takes the omniscience of melodrama a tad too far. Despite this, however, this is a work which is beautiful and thought-provoking, one which fits beautifully into an evolving, yet circling, Almodóvarian project, yet at the same time holds its own in terms of the visceral and intellectual pleasure of the viewing experience, and in terms of originality.
Showing posts with label exploitation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exploitation. Show all posts
Saturday, August 7, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Mario Bava - La Maschera Del Demonio aka Black Sunday, The Mask of Satan (1960)
I’m not sure if I was missing something, but I was somewhat underwhelmed by this highly considered, influential early Bava vehicle. Extremely loosely adapted from Gogol, and set in Moldavia in the early 1800s, the plot follows Katia (Barbara Steele) and her father and brother, aristocratic descendants of the infamous witch Asa (also played by Barbara Steele) and her partner in Faustianism, Javuto. Two doctors travelling through the area (the younger of whom is Katia’s love interest) accidentally unseal Asa’s tomb, and so the plot is set in motion, as Asa and Javuto take their revenge on the descendants of Asa's brother-cum-executioner (yes, it’s a tad convoluted, but don’t let that bother you). The film was censored for some years due to the gruesome opening scene, in which Asa, condemned as a witch by her brother, is branded and has a spiked mask hammered on to her face before being burned at the stake.
La Maschera... is a moodily atmospheric and melodramatic film (as a point of interest the original score was, in the US, redone by exoticist Les Baxter, a piece I must try to track down) featuring some wonderful set pieces, and one can certainly see how influential it has been in the horror genre as a whole. In particular, Barbara Steele has an unforgettable face, not classically attractive, architectural yet also vulnerable, and the focus on the eyes, in particular, and ocular violence, is almost a lynchpin on which the movie hangs. The villains, Asa and Javuto, are vampires of a sort, and again the importance of this film for the development of the vampire genre is evident, but they are by no means the clichéd creations of later films. The theme dealing with the Inquisition and with sadistic torture (as well as the underlying eroticism in the relationship between Asa and Katia) is also a landmark which we can trace through to works such as Witchfinder General and its legion (pun intended) imitations, not to mention the lesbian vampire exploitation genre. Indeed, the film was widely censored and banned on the basis of the queasy brutality of the opening scene. There is a particularly memorable Unheimliche quality to the developing scenes in which we see the regeneration of Asa’s eyeless and scarred, but otherwise perfectly preserved corpse.
Nonetheless, having said all this, there is a certain uncomfortably horsehair, overstuffed quality to the film – like the furniture throughout – which, along with its over-slow pacing (tell me I’m not a typical child of the blink generation), keeps this film from being a paradigmatic example of the dark, stylish genre masterpieces which would reach their zenith in Italian cinema of the 1970s.
La Maschera... is a moodily atmospheric and melodramatic film (as a point of interest the original score was, in the US, redone by exoticist Les Baxter, a piece I must try to track down) featuring some wonderful set pieces, and one can certainly see how influential it has been in the horror genre as a whole. In particular, Barbara Steele has an unforgettable face, not classically attractive, architectural yet also vulnerable, and the focus on the eyes, in particular, and ocular violence, is almost a lynchpin on which the movie hangs. The villains, Asa and Javuto, are vampires of a sort, and again the importance of this film for the development of the vampire genre is evident, but they are by no means the clichéd creations of later films. The theme dealing with the Inquisition and with sadistic torture (as well as the underlying eroticism in the relationship between Asa and Katia) is also a landmark which we can trace through to works such as Witchfinder General and its legion (pun intended) imitations, not to mention the lesbian vampire exploitation genre. Indeed, the film was widely censored and banned on the basis of the queasy brutality of the opening scene. There is a particularly memorable Unheimliche quality to the developing scenes in which we see the regeneration of Asa’s eyeless and scarred, but otherwise perfectly preserved corpse.
Nonetheless, having said all this, there is a certain uncomfortably horsehair, overstuffed quality to the film – like the furniture throughout – which, along with its over-slow pacing (tell me I’m not a typical child of the blink generation), keeps this film from being a paradigmatic example of the dark, stylish genre masterpieces which would reach their zenith in Italian cinema of the 1970s.
Friday, December 11, 2009
Russ Meyer - Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (1965)
I’m somewhat abashed at admitting that I have never thus far seen the film that John Waters called ‘beyond a doubt the best movie ever made.’ I must say, this was a better film than I expected – not only a kitschy classic, but also a compelling, fast-paced and well-filmed piece in its own right. The soundtrack itself, seeming a distillation about all that was good about sixties pop, sleaze and instrumental, is worth the journey, and the dialogue is witty, hilarious and eminently quotable. The landscape, too – the bare desert of California is deeply atmospheric, and adds a touch of Western gothic to the proceedings. The cinematography is excellent (leading to descriptions of the film as the Citizen Kane or Battleship Potemkin of trash) – in particular the technique of lending the proceedings a grandiosity by shots from below or shrinking the action within landscape vistas.
The story follows three go-go dancers, Billie (Lori Williams), Rosie (Haji) and the instantly memorable karate-trained, black-clad leader, Varla (Tura Satana), who get into a murderous random encounter during a drag race, after which one thing leads to another leads to a ranch inhabited by a paralysed old man sitting on a fortune, and his sons, the muscular but slow ‘Vegetable’ (Dennis Busch) and Kirk (Paul Trinka). The character of the aggressive and sexual woman is a trope which could also be seen in the sixties in music like Nancy Sinatra, and would emerge as a prototype, in particular, for many underground female performers in the punk, postpunk and no wave scenes of the late 70s and 80s, as feminism moved into the postmodern era. There is a cartoony pop-art aesthetic at work here which is evident in other works from the period such as Barbarella and Satanik.
The influence of this film on later work is immediately apparent (not to mention the influence of Varla on the femme fatale personae of later artists), from the underground work of filmmakers like Richard Kern (who also uses the Californian desert as a site of wildness and transgression) to the indie mainstream of Tarantino. As for the much-discussed topic of misogyny, I think the picture is by no means black and white. There’s certainly an objectification of women in the way that they are dressed and depicted as objectified objects of desire, in voyeurism of the female as sexually vulnerable (in the person of Linda), and in the scenes of ‘girlfights,’ showers and so forth, although, in Mae Westian style, there is very little actually revealed here – no frontal nudity, for example. The argument that women using their sexuality to get what they want as a form of empowerment is a tired furphy, but what happens here is more complicated – rather than a conservative depiction of female sexuality unleashed as the embodiment of depravity, what we see here (again characteristic of the films it would influence) is a delightfully jaundiced view of humanity where no characters are admirable – where the men are equally pitifully lecherous and weak, where the ‘moral’ characters – Tommy and Linda – are pathetic and laughable, and indeed where men are equally targets of objectification – the camera caresses the Tom of Finlandian form of Dennis Busch, depicted as little more than a fantasy of the mindless, biddable muscleman.
Ultimately, this is less a misogynistic work than a charming piece of misanthropy in which the sacred cows of morality and realism are sacrificed on the altar of spectacle and sensation – an offering which is richly rewarded.
The story follows three go-go dancers, Billie (Lori Williams), Rosie (Haji) and the instantly memorable karate-trained, black-clad leader, Varla (Tura Satana), who get into a murderous random encounter during a drag race, after which one thing leads to another leads to a ranch inhabited by a paralysed old man sitting on a fortune, and his sons, the muscular but slow ‘Vegetable’ (Dennis Busch) and Kirk (Paul Trinka). The character of the aggressive and sexual woman is a trope which could also be seen in the sixties in music like Nancy Sinatra, and would emerge as a prototype, in particular, for many underground female performers in the punk, postpunk and no wave scenes of the late 70s and 80s, as feminism moved into the postmodern era. There is a cartoony pop-art aesthetic at work here which is evident in other works from the period such as Barbarella and Satanik.
The influence of this film on later work is immediately apparent (not to mention the influence of Varla on the femme fatale personae of later artists), from the underground work of filmmakers like Richard Kern (who also uses the Californian desert as a site of wildness and transgression) to the indie mainstream of Tarantino. As for the much-discussed topic of misogyny, I think the picture is by no means black and white. There’s certainly an objectification of women in the way that they are dressed and depicted as objectified objects of desire, in voyeurism of the female as sexually vulnerable (in the person of Linda), and in the scenes of ‘girlfights,’ showers and so forth, although, in Mae Westian style, there is very little actually revealed here – no frontal nudity, for example. The argument that women using their sexuality to get what they want as a form of empowerment is a tired furphy, but what happens here is more complicated – rather than a conservative depiction of female sexuality unleashed as the embodiment of depravity, what we see here (again characteristic of the films it would influence) is a delightfully jaundiced view of humanity where no characters are admirable – where the men are equally pitifully lecherous and weak, where the ‘moral’ characters – Tommy and Linda – are pathetic and laughable, and indeed where men are equally targets of objectification – the camera caresses the Tom of Finlandian form of Dennis Busch, depicted as little more than a fantasy of the mindless, biddable muscleman.
Ultimately, this is less a misogynistic work than a charming piece of misanthropy in which the sacred cows of morality and realism are sacrificed on the altar of spectacle and sensation – an offering which is richly rewarded.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
John Carpenter - Big Trouble In Little China (1986)
So I was in the mood for something undemanding and escapist, and boy did I get it... in a good way, that is. Carpenter has made some excellent, highly original films (They Live, In The Mouth Of Madness), some which, whatever you think of them, have earned their place in the genre hall of fame (Halloween) and many absolute shockers of the I-want-that-90-minutes-of-my-life-back variety.
The plot follows truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) as, in pursuit of a gambling debt, he helps his buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) try to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend (with the help of Gracie Law [Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City fame]) and, in the process, gets mixed up in an ancient, supernatural turf war in Chinatown, in which he and his motley gang must face down Lo Pan (James Hong), an ancient and evil sorcerer.
To get the criticisms out of the way: the dialogue is atrocious and at times absurd. The set-up of the plot doesn't really make any sense. Most obviously, the story is highly orientalist, even racist, in the way it trades in Fu Manchu stereotypes of the ancient mysticism and evil of the Orient - although at least there are many positively portrayed Asian characters as well as Lo Pan and his evil hordes.
Having said that, I enjoyed this movie a lot. It's full of a raucous energy which I found irresistible - indeed, in that aspect, as well as the orientalism, it reminded me a lot of another fun 80s action/horror/comedy, Gremlins. I'd tie these and other eighties movies with similar subject matter (The Karate Kid and so forth) to a climate in which, on the one hand, there was a lot of fear around the rising Japanese economy, while at the same time there was a growing but shallow interest in manifestations of Asian culture (and the movie does attempt to link the film in to Chinese religions and mythologies with a sprinkling of names and concepts taken from these narratives, naturally completely out of context) - the fear/fascination combination typical of orientalism.
The action is nice but there are no interminable action sequences, the soundtrack is gorgeously classic eighties synth cheese, the costumes have a similar overblown charm, and the near-ubiquitous special effects (this was a big-budget Hollywood production) stand up well considering that the film is now twenty years old. Russell himself plays the typical macho, misogynistic, smart-guy action hero, which is a thing that usually irritates me no end; but here this is balanced by various moments of parody of that figure, played out in the misadventures Russell experiences as he plays the tough guy. The humour is mostly fairly low-grade, but there were a few hilarious moments which actually had me chuckling out loud, a fairly rare occurrence.
Overall, well, if you're the type of person who goes for this kind of thing you know who you are. On the other hand, if you can't overlook the typical flaws of commercial films, particularly action films (and I should add that personally I'm not at all a fan of the 'action' genre as such), or the orientalist character of the work, this is definitely not for you. But considering that I approach Carpenter movies with some trepidation, I had a lot of fun with this film - and it's definitely one for the classics-of-eighties-fantasy-cheese collection.
The plot follows truck driver Jack Burton (Kurt Russell) as, in pursuit of a gambling debt, he helps his buddy Wang Chi (Dennis Dun) try to rescue his kidnapped girlfriend (with the help of Gracie Law [Kim Cattrall of Sex and the City fame]) and, in the process, gets mixed up in an ancient, supernatural turf war in Chinatown, in which he and his motley gang must face down Lo Pan (James Hong), an ancient and evil sorcerer.
To get the criticisms out of the way: the dialogue is atrocious and at times absurd. The set-up of the plot doesn't really make any sense. Most obviously, the story is highly orientalist, even racist, in the way it trades in Fu Manchu stereotypes of the ancient mysticism and evil of the Orient - although at least there are many positively portrayed Asian characters as well as Lo Pan and his evil hordes.
Having said that, I enjoyed this movie a lot. It's full of a raucous energy which I found irresistible - indeed, in that aspect, as well as the orientalism, it reminded me a lot of another fun 80s action/horror/comedy, Gremlins. I'd tie these and other eighties movies with similar subject matter (The Karate Kid and so forth) to a climate in which, on the one hand, there was a lot of fear around the rising Japanese economy, while at the same time there was a growing but shallow interest in manifestations of Asian culture (and the movie does attempt to link the film in to Chinese religions and mythologies with a sprinkling of names and concepts taken from these narratives, naturally completely out of context) - the fear/fascination combination typical of orientalism.
The action is nice but there are no interminable action sequences, the soundtrack is gorgeously classic eighties synth cheese, the costumes have a similar overblown charm, and the near-ubiquitous special effects (this was a big-budget Hollywood production) stand up well considering that the film is now twenty years old. Russell himself plays the typical macho, misogynistic, smart-guy action hero, which is a thing that usually irritates me no end; but here this is balanced by various moments of parody of that figure, played out in the misadventures Russell experiences as he plays the tough guy. The humour is mostly fairly low-grade, but there were a few hilarious moments which actually had me chuckling out loud, a fairly rare occurrence.
Overall, well, if you're the type of person who goes for this kind of thing you know who you are. On the other hand, if you can't overlook the typical flaws of commercial films, particularly action films (and I should add that personally I'm not at all a fan of the 'action' genre as such), or the orientalist character of the work, this is definitely not for you. But considering that I approach Carpenter movies with some trepidation, I had a lot of fun with this film - and it's definitely one for the classics-of-eighties-fantasy-cheese collection.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)