ROMANCE SCREENING

"But I still thought it might be seen as progressive in America, especially because its rare confluence of cinematic taste, literary intelligence, and hard-core sex might undercut the crippling puritanism of our movie codes, which usually equate eroticism with porn, sleaze, and stupidity rather than, say, art, health, and intelligence."
-Jonathan Rosenbaum, CHICAGO READER

"In her solemn, sexually graphic ''Romance,'' Catherine Breillat explores the nature of a woman's need for male attention and erotic love. Though many of her film's insights might be obtained from back copies of Cosmopolitan plus a smattering of the Marquis de Sade, watching it is a memorable experience for several reasons. Not least of these is its blunt, hard-core frankness. It's doubtful that the film's intellectual aspects would command the same attention if the camera did not make the actors' genitals as familiar as their faces."
-Janet Maslin, NEW YORK TIMES


Suggested Secondary Screenings:  EYES WIDE SHUT (Stanley Krubick, 1999) and LAST TANGO IN PARIS (Bernardo Bertolucci, 1972)

THE PIANO TEACHER SCREENING

"There is an old saying:  Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it. THE PIANO TEACHER has a more ominous lesson:  Be especially careful with someone who has asked for you."
-Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN TIMES

"Once one expereinces Mr. Haneke's own sadistic tendencies toward his audience, one is left with a sour taste in one's mouth, and little else."
-Andrew Sarris, NEW YORK OBSERVER

"Retraint is this movie's mystery and its miracle. No matter how gruesom it is, mercifully, it's always holding back."
-Wesley Morris, BOSTON GLOBE

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  BELLE DU JOUR (Luis Bunuel, 1967) and THE NIGHT PORTER (Liliana Cavani, 1974)

SITCOM SCREENING

"A pet rat sets off a chain reaction of debauchery in a prim and proper nuclear family in SITCOM, a sort of 'Mouse Hunt meets the Marquis de Sade'... promising in outlets that relish notoriety and aren't obliged to shy away from jaunty depictions of homosexuality, bisexuality, S&M, incest..."
-Lisa Nesselson, VARIETY


"SITCOM is a clever little movie that demonstrates the advantages and limitations of cleverness alone."
-Mick LaSalle, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE


"SITCOM, which is sardonically filmed with the snappy look of a television comedy, has a sour streak that eventually poisons its humor. Mr. Ozon pushed the limits of shock value much more effectively with the carefully measured violence of SEE THE SEA than he does with this frontal assault."
-Janet Maslin, NEW YORK TIMES

BAISE-MOI SCREENING

"Despite some game performances from two lead femmes, this hard-core pic is a half-baked, punk-inflected porn odyssey masquerading as a movie worth seeing and talking about."
-Lisa Nesselson, VARIETY

"It alternates between between graphic, explicit sex scenes and murder scenes of brutal cruelty.  You recoil from what's on the screen.  Later, you ask what the filmmakers had in mind.  They are French, and so we know some kind of ideology and rationalization must lurk beneath the blood and semen... BAISE-MOI is more of a bluff.  The directors know their film is so extreme that most will be repelled, but some will devise intellectual defenses and interpretations for it, saving them the trouble of making it clear what they want to say."
-Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

One of recent cinema's most controversial texts, BAISE-MOI is an unapologetic display of graphic violence and explicit sex.  The audacity and effrontery of the film has led to violent debates and drastic censorship.  It is a film made very much in the punk mindset.  Quality is sacrificed for raw emotion.  It has upset many for its blurring of art and pornography as well as its association with exploitation.  Like the French New Wave before it, BAISE-MOI manages to unite low and high culture forms.  Porn and philosophy make an uneasy marriage in the film.

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED (Kirby Dick, 2006), THE PORNOGRAPHER (Bertrand Bonello, 2001), DESTRCITED (Various Directors, 2006), and THELMA AND LOUISE (Ridley Scott, 1991)

NOE AND FASHION

Agnes B, a French fashion company, helped finance Gaspar Noe's first feature film I STAND ALONE (as well as being specifically thanked at the end of TROUBLE EVERY DAY).  There is an undeniable connection between the themes of the New Extreme and high fashion, especially European fashion magazines.  It is a really interesting collision of art and commerce, similar to cinema itself.  Here a a couple examples of the intersection of fashion, cinema, and the extreme through Gaspar Noe.  Earlier we watched a few of his music videos where he honed some techniques and probably picked up a pay check, and these offer a similar glimpse at Noe's methods.  The first is an avant-garde/experimental set of shorts staring super model Eva Herzigova and the second is a cologne commercial staring Vincent Cassel.

IRREVERSIBLE SCREENING

"An integrated work whose form clearly mirrors its content."
-Rick Groen, GLOBE AND MAIL

"Noe's summation is an ideological sucker-punch from a filmmaker who gets off on abusive relationships."
-Wesley Morris, BOSTON GLOBE

"Is there a point to this spew, a cry against the mongrel violence of men? Or is Noe merely a sadist who enjoys inflicting ugly, pitiless images on his audience?"
-Edward Guthmann, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

One of the most controversial and infamous films, IRREVERSIBLE continues Gaspar Noe's attempts to alienate his audience.  Based on the premise that 'time destroys everything,' IRREVERSIBLE employs a backward narration that reimagines the genre of the rape-revenge film.  Combining images and sounds that irritate and trouble, Noe assaults the spectator.  Now a cult film, its original release united debates over its sexual violence, censorship, and artistic expression.

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  5x2 (Francois Ozon, 2004) and MEMENTO (Christopher Nolan, 2000)

SEX IS COMEDY SCREENING

"There are insightful moments about the delicate relationships between a director and her cast, and about the mind games that go on both behind the camera and in front of it."

-Andrew Sarris, NEW YORK OBSERVER

"It's refreshing to see this side of Breillat, a self-reflective artist whose evident anger over the sexual state of the world doesn't entirely subsume her, or her humanity."

-John Anderson, NEWSDAY

"A rigorous and bracingly charming movie about moviemaking."

-Ty Burr, BOSTON GLOBE

Perhaps the least extreme of the films we will watch, SEX IS COMEDY is a commentary on what it means to represent sex on screen from the perspective of the actor and the director.  In this meta-film, a Breillat surrogate must work with two young actors as well as her crew to capture a moment of raw intimacy and intensity.  The director employs numerous and often contradictory strategies to achieve her goal and edges the border of exploitation, sadomasochism, and touches on issues of consent.  How far must one push oneself or others in the pursuit of art?  This is the central question of Breillat's film and her cinema overall.  As we continue with her work, a fascination with the obscene, that which should not be seen, will continue and SEX IS COMEDY is an excellent text that Breillat provides to explain her method and motivations.

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  IRMA VEP (Olivier Assayas, 1996), BEWARE OF A HOLY WHORE (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1971), DAY FOR NIGHT (Francois Truffaut, 1973), CONTEMPT (Jean-Luc Godard, 1963), BROKEN EMBRACES (Pedro Almodovar, 2009), THE FIVE OBSTRUCTIONS (Lars von Trier, 2003) and H STORY (Nobuhiro Suwa, 2001).

THE PRETTY THINGS ARE GOING TO HELL

Here is David Bowie's 'The Pretty Things are Going to Hell,' which appears in FAT GIRL during the drive.  The lyrics are prophetic for the the film and speak a lot about the edge and crossing over, which is an interesting and important concept in Breillat's work as well as the New French Cinema of Cruelty in general.

CORAL GABLES ART CINEMA

In the following weeks the Coral Gables Art Cinema will be screening a few films of interest.  These features exhibit some of the best recent Queer and Extreme films.  If you haven't been the Coral Gables Art Cinema is a great new venue on Aragon in Coral Gables across from Books & Books.

Gregg Araki's KABOOM: Starts March 25

The latest from Queer auteur Gregg Araki, KABOOM debuted at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.  Infused with queer desires, youthful angst, and a post-apocalyptic humor, KABOOM is extreme in its form and content.  The film will convey a similar tone as some of Francois Ozon's work in the merging of horror and comedy.  Also look for Roxane Mesquida, star of FAT GIRL and SEX IS COMEDY, who crosses from the French Extreme to American film.

Also check out Araki's THE DOOM GENERATION (1995), MYSTERIOUS SKIN (2004), and SMILEY FACE (2007).

Francois Ozon's POTICHE: Starts April 1


Francois Ozon does another 180 from his previous film in POTICHE.  Set in 1970s France, POTICHE manages to explore communism, feminism, and the family in a kitschy, campy, and entertaining way.  Starring two of France's biggest stars, Catherine Deneuve and Gerard Depardieu, Ozon shows his ability to operate in mainstream cinema without losing his auteurist viewpoint and managing to subvert while entertaining.

Also check out Ozon's WATER DROPS ON BURNING ROCKS (2000) and 8 WOMEN (2002) as well as Jacques Demy's THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG (1962).

Xavier Dolan's HEARTBEATS: Starts April 8

Now considered the wunderkind of Francophone film, Xavier Dolan's follow up to I KILLED MY MOTHER is having its South Florida theatrical debut.  Dolan earned a standing ovation at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival for his first film and is experiencing equal praise for HEARTBEATS.  Dolan's work personifies the potential of queer cinema and its continued importance in cinema.

Jee-woon Kim's I SAW THE DEVIL: Starts April 15

Part of a renaissance in South Korean Cinema, Jee-woon Kim has produced artful and entertaining genre films that question the limits and benefits of genre. His work, as well as the larger body of South Korean works, manages to engorss both audiences and film critics while grossing big at the box office.  The film concerns a secret agent seeking revenge for his wife who was murdered by a serial killer, played by Min-sik Choi of OLDBOY.

Also check out Ki'm's A TALE OF TWO SISTERS (2003) and THE GOOD, THE BAD, THE WEIRD (2008) as well as Chan-wook Park's OLDBOY (2003).

FAT GIRL SCREENING

"I was kind of mad at the way things had this arbitrary development ... That's what happens in real life... I thought a lot about this movie after I saw it -- days afterwards, a week afterwards."

-Richard Roeper, EBERT & ROEPER

"FAT GIRL is uncompromising and unforgiving, but ultimately more self-destructive than any of its characters."

-Jay Carr, BOSTON GLOBE

"There is a jolting surprise in discovering that this film has free will, and can end as it wants, and that its director can make her point, however brutally."

-Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

Catherine Breillat has described this film as a story about "a soul with two bodies."  FAT GIRL is a frank exploration of sisterhood and adolescent sexuality that has shocked audiences and enraged censors.  Revolving around the complicated relationship between Anais, a twelve-year-old ugly duckling, and her gorgeous older sister Elena, FAT GIRL is uncompromising, brutal, and unflinchingly honest.  The tension between Anais and Elena grows when Elena meets Fernando, an Italian law student, who seduces her with promises of love while Anais bears witness to the corruption of her sister's 'innocence.'

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  BLUEBEARD (Breillat, 2009), A REAL YOUNG GIRL (Breillat, 1976), MOUCHETTE (Robert Bresson, 1967), BABY DOLL (Elia Kazan, 1956), LOLITA (Stanley Kubrick, 1962), and AMERICAN PIE (Paul Weitz, 1999) [Just kidding, sort of, it might make a really great comparison paper.]

 

HALF WAY DONE!

Since the films in this class can make you want to scream, enjoy your spring break with some of these titles:

THE RED BALLOON

AMELIE

HEARTBREAKER

L'AUBERGE ESPAGNOLE

RUSSIAN DOLLS

DAY FOR NIGHT

A WOMAN IS A WOMAN

PARIS JE T'AIME

These are free of extreme violence, brutal sexuality, and, most importantly, free of any animal cruelty.  Have a good spring break.

L'HUMANITE SCREENING

"Bruno Dumont's flawed masterpiece ... You probably won't feel comfortable when HUMANITE is over, but as you leave the theater you will feel more alive than when you entered."
-Stephen Holden, NEW YORK TIMES

"Ought to be seen, because it's a work of moral and spiritual mystery as stubbornly challenging as GONE IN 60 SECONDS is morally anesthetizing."
-ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

L'HUMANITE begins with the epitome of the abject, a corpse.  Investigating the rape and murder of an 11 year-old girl, Pharaon De Winter struggles with himself and the harsh realities of the world.  Directed by Bruno Dumont, the film is symbolic and contemplative as it presents the landscape of the body and the body as landscape.  Paralleling the investigation, De Winter becomes intertwined in a bizarre love triangle between himself and his neighbors Domino and Joseph.  De Winter witnesses a similar crude brutality between Domino and Joseph as he tries to find a murderer.  Inbetween police procedural and avant-garde meditation on humanity, L'HUMANITE won three of the biggest prizes at the Cannes Film Festival in 1999.

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  MOUCHETTE (Robert Bresson, 1967) and TWENTYNINE PALMS (Dumont, 2003).

INSIDE SCREENING

"I leave you to discover, through covered eyes, the gut-splattering delirium to come."

-Nathan Lee, VILLAGE VOICE

"For those who like their blood by the barrelful, INSIDE is just the ticket.  Awash in red liquid that drips, oozes, spurts and pours, pic restarts the French gore genre with an over-the-top sadism sure to please fans of schlock horror."

-Jay Weissberg, VARIETY

"INSIDE is an instant modern classic en francais, along the lines of HAUTE TENSION, IRREVERSIBLE, and DANS MA PEAU.  Don't miss it."

-Staci Layne Wilson, HORROR.COM

A prime example of the new extreme horror genre currently making its way out of Europe.  Taking gore to a new level, these films are often linked to American 'torture porn' like SAW and HOSTEL, yet different.  Not an 'art film' like TROUBLE EVERY DAY or IN MY SKIN, but not artless by any means, INSIDE shows a parallel movement in French Cinema toward the extreme.  Despite their obvious differences, there are numerous similarities in theme, the permeability of skin, and form, techniques used to cinematically express pain, to the previous films under analysis. 

Suggested Secondary Screenings:  MARTYRS (Pascal Laugier, 2008), THEM (David Moreau and Xavier Palud, 2006), FRONTIER(S) (Xavier Gens, 2007)

ABJECT POP CULTURE

Lady Gaga's latest music video for BORN THS WAY abounds with abject imagery, from monstrous birth to altered human bodies.

TROUBLE EVERY DAY (1966)

Claire Denis named her film TROUBLE EVERY DAY (2001) after a 1966 Frank Zappa song of the same name. Released on the debut album FREAK OUT! by Zappa's band The Mothers of Invention, was written in 1965 as Zappa watched the Watts Riots. The riot lasted 6 days in Los Angeles, which killed 34 and injured over a thousand.  It ranked as the largest riot in Los Angeles until 1992.  The themes of racial and social injustice as well as violence pertain to Denis' body of work as a director and her experiences in colonial Africa.

TROUBLE EVERY DAY SCREENING

"... a film that is profoundly disturbing, yet hauntingly unforgettable."

-John Anderson, NEWSDAY

"Nothing Denis has made before ... could prepare us for this gory, perverted, sex-soaked riff on the cannibal genre."
-V.A. Musetto, NEW YORK POST

"Purposefully shocking in its eroticized gore, if unintentionally dull in its lack of poetic frissons."
-J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

"A hysterical yet humorless disquisition on the thin line between sucking face and literally sucking face."
-Lisa Schwarzbaum, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Emphasizing mood over narrative TROUBLE EVERY DAY is an erotic modern-day horror story about a man and woman separated by thousands of miles, yet united by an insatiable taste for human flesh.  An American couple honeymooning in Paris shifts to a horror story when the groom is unable to control his libido for sex and violence.  He has come to Paris in search of an elusive doctor studying his particular ailment, which coincidentally afflicts the doctor's own wife.  Divided between his pure bride and the doctor's carnivorous wife, the man's impulses turn to a disturbing sexual violence.  An abstract horror film with a mysterious illness, a mad scientist, and cannibals, TROUBLE EVERY DAY eschews traditional narrative and either reinvents or destroys the horror genre in the process. 

Suggested Supplemental Screenings:  WHITE MATERIAL (Denis, 2009), BETTY BLUE (Jean-Jacques Beineix, 1986), NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD (George Romero, 1968)

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Since skin has become such a prominent feature in the films we have been studying, I thought this report on a book covered in human skin would be interesting.  The book, covered in the skin of a convicted murderer, is currently on display as part of a history exhibit in the United Kingdom. 

The book in question is an 1852 edition of THE POETICAL WORKS OF JOHN MILTON.  The text is an example of anthropodermic bibliopegy.  Most common in the 18th and 19th centuries, the process was often used to bound medical texts.

If only Esther could have figured this process out. 

Here is the article.

BONELLO SHORT

The following is a short film Bonello did with Asia Argento, a star and director associated with the New Extreme, titled CINDY: THE DOLL IS MINE, which played at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival.  The film is clearly referencing the work of Cindy Sherman, an artist associated with abject art, and the self-portraits that she is known for.  Bonello and Argento, who worked together in ON WAR (2008), problematize gender by casting Argento in a stereotypically feminine role of performer and a stereotypically masculine role of artist.  Like male and female are challenged in TIRESIA, CINDY: THE DOLL IS MINE questions femininity and masculinity in relation to the roles of performance and artistic creation and the relationship between performer and director.

TIRESIA SCREENING

"Full of powerfully emotional scenes, even if it's almost entirely untouchable -- obtuse, bewildering and almost agonisingly slow."

-Rich Cline, SHADOW ON THE WALL

"The overall intention remains inscrutable, despite the strong presence of the performers and Bonnello’s attempt to will significance into the material by holding each shot over a glacial time-span."

-TIME OUT LONDON

"Intense, intriguing, beautifully framed and intellectually challenging, TIRESIA defies easy categorisation (much like its principal character)."

-Anton Bitel, EYE FOR FILM

In a film movement linked by the connection between transgression and transcendence, Bertrand Bonnello's TIRESIA stands out as one of the New Extremes most difficult, frustrating, and rewarding works.  A film that demands you meet it more than half way as well as requires a fair knowledge of Greek mythology, TIRESIA is steeped in classical traditions as well as modernist filmmaking.  Following the imprisonment of a pre-op transsexual prostitute and her subsequent blinding and gift of prophecy, the film touches on the abject and issues of fate.  As an in-between body, on that challenges preconceived order, such as gender, Tiresia, the character, and TIRESIA, the film, are an interesting addition to transgender film.

Suggested Supplemental Screenings:  TRANSAMERICA (Duncan Tucker, 2005), HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001), ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER (Pedro Almodovar, 1999), XXY (Lucia Puenzo, 2007), BOYS DON'T CRY (Kimberly Peirce, 1999)

ABJECT ART

Following the publication of Julia Kristeva's POWERS OF HORROR, in which she outlines her theory or theories of abjection, numerous artists emerged experimenting it what became labeled as abject art.  It is an interesting movement that parallels a lot of the themes we are seeing and will see in this course.  In 1993 the Whitney Museum in New York created the exhibition Abject Art: Repulsion and Desire in American Art, which combined numerous artists producing work in the 1980s and 1990s.  The art often denotes an interest in the body or corporeality and especially transgressions of the body and our sense of cleanliness and propriety.  Abject artists toyed with ideas of censorship and obscenity:  what is deemed inappropriate for display and discussion.  Often noted for a feminist context, a challenge to patriarchal social order, abject artists such as Cindy Sherman, Louise Bourgeois, Gilbert & George, Paul McCarthy, and Carolee Schneemann, provoked audiences and changed the course of modern art. 

(Birth-Bourgeois-1994, Untitled-Sherman-1992, Cunt Scum-Gilbert & George-1977)

Assignment:  After briefly researching Abject Art, find a work that is part of the movement or you think ties in with the movement.  Simply explain why you are interested in that particular work and how it ties into some of the issues we have been discussing in class.  Due Tuesday March 1st.

The remaining films we will screen will have a noticeable preoccupation with the body and the intertwined experiences of desire and disgust.  These films stress the fragility of the body as well as our own fascination and fear of transgressing boundaries in context of violence and sexuality.  Below is a music video for the Klaxon's TWIN FLAMES, directed by Saam Farahmand, which touches on the abject through an orgy of conjoined bodies.  It is a video that is haunting, disturbing, and strangely beautiful: in essence, abject.