reviews

A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night (2014)

/ swampflix / 8 Comments

threehalfstar

A lot of comparisons Ana Lily Amirpour’s vampire-themed A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has been garnering are to indie director Jim Jarmusch’s 80s work. Indeed, Girls Walks Home has a stark, black & white look to it as well as a preference for a laid-back cool over plot momentum that resembles Jarmusch, who made his own vampire movie last year with Only Lovers Left Alive. However, I found myself thinking of an entirely different film while watching Armipour’s debut feature, albeit another work from the 80s: Kathryn Bigelow’s classic vampire Western Near Dark. Near Dark has a similar style-over-substance ethos shared by Amirpour & Jarmusch, but it fits in with Girl Walks Home a lot closer thematically than any other work I can recall. This thematic similarity is apparent in the gender-swapped vulnerability in characters’ sexual desire. Both A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night & Near Dark feature a young woman venturing alone in public after sunset & being solicited by strange, potentially dangerous men. Normally, the woman would be perceived as the vulnerable party in these situations, but their hidden vampirism disrupts the power balance and complicates the tension.

An essential difference between the films is that Near Dark abandons the idea of vampiric, gender-swapped nightstalking early on to focus on unconventional ideas of family, while A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night develops the concept into a feature length film. Much like its title, the film itself has a quiet, dangerous sort of beauty to it that is amplified by its Iranian setting. Pantomimed felatio, prostitution, and concerns about the impropriety of being alone with the opposite sex feel all the more dangerous when considered in the context of the draconian culture that surrounds them. A decidedly feminist bent turns the tables on these vibes and makes victims out of the men who would be the most likely perpetrators in these situations. The film’s central vampire punishes pimps & rapists and scares children into being good little boys for the rest of their lives. She’s more of a (murderous) Batman or a Miss Meadows than a Dracula in this way. Not everything she does is right & justified (there’s an encounter with a homeless victim that calls her moral code into question), but there’s a general sense that she’s righting a wrong in her encounters with the dangerous men she haunts.

Of course, as a debut, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night has a few kinks that could be worked out. It’s a very showy, stylish film that suggests Armipour has a lot of fascinating work in her that we’ll be treated to in the coming years. At the same time, it’s a little misshapen & awkwardly paced and its showiness occasionally risks a sort of indie movie triteness. Its imagery milks a lot of atmosphere out of stray cats, spinning records, skateboarding, and heroin abuse that sometimes works extremely well & sometimes comes off a little like a 90s Calvin Klein ad. When it’s firing on all cylinders, though, such as in a particularly effective makeup application scene or when the vampire is casually flipping through a victim’s CD collection after a kill, it’s a very memorable, humorous, and visually gorgeous work that will be likely to stick in the public consciousness for a while to come. The distillation of my favorite aspect of Near Dark & its working-class vibes in lines like, “Idiots & rich people are the only ones who think things can change,” also combine to make it an endearing film to me, personally. Based on what I’ve seen here, I’m very much excited to see where Armipour’s efforts go in the future.

-Brandon Ledet

The Zero Theorem (2014)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

fourstar

The most frequent complaint about The Zero Theorem, Terry Gilliam’s latest film, is that it’s “more of the same” without adding much more to the conversation. That is to say that it borrows too much form Gilliam’s own oeuvre, specifically the themes & imagery established in two of his biggest works: Brazil & 12 Monkeys. Honestly, I find it hard to fault a director for exploring “more of the same”, when “the same” is such a delicious plethora of weird ideas & images. Gilliam has an absurd talent for making outlandish, mind-melting worlds feel authentically lived-in and The Zero Theorem does not disappoint in that way. The future world portrayed here not only feels reasonable, but almost probable. This is partly because it’s sketched out in small, intimate spaces instead of the grand, sweeping strokes typical to Gilliam’s work. This not only makes the film feel oddly believable; it also helps to fix a problem I usually have with his work: pacing. For me, Terry Gilliam films, despite being impressive & entertaining, tend to feel about 6 hours longer than their actual run times. By narrowing its focus The Zero Theorem is more of an effortless breeze to watch than his usual fare, feeling much more concise in its narrative. It may be “more of the same” visually & thematically, but structurally it’s a much tighter execution than Gilliam’s normal mode.

The world Gilliam builds in The Zero Theorem is overwhelming, but not at all unlikely. Glowing screens dominate the landscape, allowing advertisements to follow humble number cruncher Qohen (Christoph Waltz) to his oppressive office job where he sits before even more screens. Although the imagery is overstuffed with weird machines & high pop art fashion, there’s a lived-in grey grime that covers the surface of The Zero Theorem that makes its vision of the future feel authentic. An especially telling scene shows a house party where all of the celebrants are dancing to their own individual music players, headphones in ears, eyes affixed to the computer tablets in their hands. The isolation of technology & cubicle work is by no means a new concept, but Gilliam pushes it to an extreme here. At first Qohen is on a humble quest to work from home (due to a perceived Joe Vs the Volcano “brain cloud” type disease), but then he finds himself trying to prove that the Universe & life itself are meaningless. As Qohen attempts to make sense of the film’s swirling black holes, weird machines, and futuristic sex work, he proposes that “Nothing adds up.” He’s corrected, “You’ve got it backwards. Everything adds up to nothing.” Ultimately, the film works that way as well. There’s a lot of ideas & themes about romance, technology, corporate dystopia, and the surveillance state floating around The Zero Theorem, threatening to amount to a grand statement about life, love, and nature, but ultimately the film decides that everything means nothing and we are each alone in our plights.

It’s the small-scale implications of The Zero Theorem’s plot that anchor its larger, more philosophical thoughts on the emptiness of everything. Although Qohen is trying to uncover the basic significance of the universe at large, it’s the goings on inside his hermetic abandoned church home that constitute most of the run time. The focus on Qohen’s struggle for self-acceptance, his embarrassing attempts at a love life, and his slavish, Waiting for Godot dedication to a potential incoming phone call provides a steady foundation for the film’s more ludicrous, throwaway concepts like virtual therapy and The Church of Batman the Redeemer. Waltz also does a great job of anchoring the film with a quiet, unassuming performance that’s far from his over-the-top hamming in Tim Burton’s Big Eyes. He leaves that hamming up to relative newcomer Lucas Hedges, who easily steals the back half of the film (which is no small feat, considering that half features a rapping Tilda Swinton).  In a lot of ways The Zero Theorem is more of the same from Terry Gilliam, but its narrowed focus & intimate setting affords it a more concise-feeling execution of ideas & images he’s explored before rather than an exact retread. It’s not the greatest thing he’s ever done, but it’s by no means an inconsequential work either. Instead, it’s another great, intentionally overwhelming film from a director who’s built a storied career full of them.

-Brandon Ledet

Jupiter Ascending (2015)

/ swampflix / 12 Comments

EPSON MFP image

onehalfstar

campstamp

The worst part about hating Jupiter Ascending is that I was really rooting for it. I’m not a Wachowskis super fan or anything (I barely know of their work outside The Maxtrix & Speed Racer); I just liked the movie’s basic concept & attributes. The idea of a sci-fi action-adventure with a female lead hit a lot of my sweet spots right out of the gate, but every one of those elements in the final product fell embarrassingly flat. The female lead, played by Mila Kunis, is for the most part a passenger & an observer while the action swirls around her (she’s a literal princess in need of saving, even). The action itself alternates from occasionally engaging to just painfully awful, anchored mostly by an against-all-odds unsexy Channing Tatum figure skating through the air (thanks to some kind of goofy laser boots) while terrible CGI obstacles crash & burn in his wake. That leaves the film’s sci-fi concepts to carry the load, which they occasionally do in a Richard Kelly kitchen sink fashion, but even those fade to long stretches of unimpressive action sequences. In short, Jupiter Ascending is a failure, when I really, really didn’t want it to be.

I’m just one dude, though! There’s a lot floating around in the film for people to latch onto. Beautiful, futuristic landscapes & architecture are populated with (unbelievably dumb-looking) alien weirdos like CGI lizard minions & humanoid owl things (that look like Ron Perlmen in Beauty and the Beast). Eddy Redmayne gives a (laughably) memorable performance as an evil alien dictator (who is just a wig & a sashay short of a killer drag routine). The aforementioned Richard Kelly brand of too-plentiful ideas contrast an undocumented immigrant’s life as a servant on Earth with distant & lavish alien aristocrats (who cares). There’s some (mildly amusing) honey bee worship (à la Upside Down) that results in the line “Bees are genetically designed to recognize royalty.” Other lines like “Your Earth is a very small part of a very large industry,” and “Time is the single most precious commodity in the universe,” also have a sort of a staying power (even if it’s as a joke). There’s a whole lot to love in Jupiter Ascending, but if you’re like me and have problems arriving on its wavelength, that excess gets ugly quickly.

If I had to boil what’s wrong with Jupiter Ascending down to a single fault it would be that it’s just so thoroughly uncool. I could be wrong and the movie’s late 90s Hot Topic raver aesthetic could be vintage enough to be cool again (if it was ever cool), but from my POV it just feels painfully outdated, like watching your stepdad desperately try to be hip. Imagine if The Fifth Element arrived 20 years late, dead serious (or at least not funny), and about as exciting as The Ice Pirates. Maybe a list of the character names will give you an idea of what I’m describing here: Jupiter Jones, Titus Abrasax, Phylo Percadium, Gemma Chatterjee, Stinger Apini, etc. If these names belong anywhere (and I’m not sure that they do) it’s on a TV screen, clogging up a low-rent Battlestar Galactica knockoff. Much of the film operates this way, feeling like a television show whose special effects budget was afforded way too much money and not nearly enough time to get the details right. I sincerely hope that there are people who have positive experiences with Jupiter Ascending, as I do find it interesting in concept, but it’s a movie I would love to never see or think about again. This might work out just fine, as even while I was watching I felt like it had been released nearly two decades ago.

-Brandon Ledet

Bulletproof Monk (2003)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

threehalfstar

campstamp

There’s a delicate balance at work in Bulletproof Monk (which easily could also have been titled Tibetan Punk! or Monks & Punks) that a lot of lesser films fail to achieve. Judging solely by the basic monks & punks premise and the cheesy early 00s imagery, it’s by all means a bad movie. At the same time, however, it resists nearly all negative criticism by being such a delightfully goofy bad movie that’s very much self-aware in its vapid silliness. In a lot of ways the film sells itself as a action-comedy cash-in on the cultural & financial success of martial arts choreography-fests The Matrix & Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, but it also has its own charms as a unique intellectual property, which are mostly dependent on the natural charisma of its costars Yun-Fat Chow (as the monk) and Seann William Scott (as the punk, naturally).

The story begins in a Tibetan monastery where an elderly monk plays right into the classic one-day-from-retirement trope and is brutally murdered in a hailstorm of bullets. What kind of a bastard would murder a kind, old monk, you ask? Why, a Nazi bastard, of course. In addition to the film’s already preposterous buddy dynamic of a Tibetan punk and a New York City punk, Bulletproof Monk also makes room for aging, power-hungry Nazis, a shirtless British rapper named Mr. Funktastic, and the red-hot daughter of a Russian crime lord. It’s a quite silly hodgepodge of mismatched characters, but they have more in common than you’d expect. For instance, both aging Nazis & shirtless British rappers enjoy hanging out in underground smokeshow lairs that split the aesthetic difference between steampunk & Hot Topic. Also, New York City pickpockets who inexplicable live in millionaires’ apartments above adorable single screen cinemas and pious Tibetan monks both share a deep passion for Crouching Tiger-type martial arts & Matrix-era bullet time, which the former learned from the movie theater and the latter from his lifetime dedication to protecting an ancient scroll that’s incredibly important for some reason or another.

The critical consensus at the time of Bulletproof Monk’s release was that it was a disappointing comedy saved from being a total wash solely by the virtues of Chow Yun-Fat’s martial arts skills. I’m not sure if its campy charms have just improved with time or if I’m just more able than most to excuse a movie’s faults sheerly for the purity of its goofy attitude, but it’s hard for me to fault a movie that features Chow Yun-Fat performing gymnastics on a mid-flight helicopter’s landing gear or the line “Lucky for you this crumpet’s come begging for some of my funktastic love.” Seann William Scott is also surprisingly convincing as a no-good punk with a heart of gold and there are some genuinely striking images of him learning/practicing kung fu in front of a movie screen. Bulletproof Monk may have been a disappointing development for Chow Yun-Fat’s fans after the heights of his John Woo collaborations & career-defining performance in the Oscar-winning Crouching Tiger, but for a fan of goofy buddy comedies, bizarre cultural relics, and Nazi war criminals getting their due, it’s quite a treat & surprisingly just as impervious to criticism as it is to bullets.

-Brandon Ledet

X/Y (2015)

/ swampflix / 1 Comment

EPSON MFP image

three star

It’s not the film’s fault, but I had a hard time appreciating X/Y after seeing a similar backdrop & story played out so excellently in the recent break-up drama Appropriate Behavior. The two movies aren’t even that much alike. They do both begin at the end of a relationship between a young couple in NYC, but while Appropriate Behavior closely follows the emotional fallout of a single protagonist, X/Y tracks the ripples of the dissolution in a series of vignettes that details how four friends’ lives are affected by the change. In light of their disparate structural differences, it’s far from fair of me to compare the two films, but there’s just something really special about Appropriate Behavior that makes X/Y feel inessential in its wake. The lack of a connection between the film’s free-floating segments (each named after the character they follow) didn’t help either.

“Mark”: The first segment concerns Mark as he deals with his recent break-up with Sylvia by flirting with strangers, working out, and drinking to excess. We also follow him to a business meeting where he’s trying to sell a script to a major film studio and his agent provides him the advice, “Don’t fuck it up with this ‘I went to film school so I have to make art’ bullshit.” We’re most likely supposed to identify with Mark in this moment (who I guess is a stand-in for writer/director Ryan Piers Williams?) but at the same time it’s easy to see how X/Y could’ve benefited from the same advice.

“Jen”: The “free spirit” of the group, Jen is the only character in the film not in an emotional tailspin from a recent break-up, but instead suffers from the emptiness of single life. Jen is currently between jobs, between romantic flings, and between moments of knowing what to do with herself while she’s alone. As she stares wistfully into her own city-life isolation while a Chromatics song gradually gets louder on the soundtrack, we start to get a clear picture of what the movie is aiming for.

“Jake”: Jake is the thematic bridge between Jen’s free spirit sadness & the Mark/Sylvia break-up. He’s a fashion model/EDM DJ/aspiring photographer/casual sex magnet that seems to “have it all” but is just as miserable as everyone else profiled here, as he struggles with both a less-recent break-up of a long term relationship and a quest for a solid personal identity. When Mark angrily asks him, “Who are you? You’re like five different people,” it feels like his entire character in a nutshell.

“Sylvia”: Sylvia is dealing with her break-up very similarly to Mark (alcohol, flirtation, exercise) except that she’s getting laid a lot more frequently. Her segment adds the least thematically to the movie, but instead is a sort of callback to the original conflict that’s supposed to tie everything together.

So, there you have it. Four NYC sad sacks drift in & out of each other’s days while all nursing broken hearts, a lonely sounding Chromatics song playing in the background to help flesh out their big city sense of isolation. It’s by no means a terrible film; it’s pleasant enough in its small scale ambitions & comfortably sullen character studies. It’s just not an especially essential film either. I feel like a real piece of shit for saying this, because the comparison is mostly unwarranted, but if you’re going to see one post-break-up NYC drama this year, make it Appropriate Behavior. That one is a real doozy & X/Y mostly just is.

-Brandon Ledet

Unfriended (2015)

/ swampflix / 18 Comments

fourstar

campstamp

Sometimes the most effective horror films are the ones that can find terror in the mundane. It’s all well & good to be terrified of humanoid freakshows like Michael Myers & Jason Voorhees, but there’s a degree of separation with monsters like that. You can imagine them stalking you in the dark, but they’re not a part of your everyday life. It’s the films that turn the familiar into threats that can cut a little closer to home. Jaws scares us about what’s lurking in water. It Follows scares us about the vulnerability of sexual encounters. Alien scares us about venturing into outer space. You know, everyday stuff. Of course, attempting to milk the mundane for scares can end up making a film out to be a punchline, like in the case of The Lift (an 80s cheapie about a haunted elevator) or in Death Bed: The Bed That Eats. It’s a fine line to draw, but if a movie can turn something ordinary into something sinister it’s a lot more likely to stick with viewers once they leave the theater.

Surprisingly, the laptop-framed live chat horror flick Unfriended has it both ways. It’s so ludicrously invested in its gimmickry that it comes off as kind of a joke, but the commitment also leads to genuinely chilling moments that remind the audience a little too much of their own digital experiences. As a dumb horror flick filmed entirely from the first-person POV of gossipy teen operating a laptop, it’s both way more fun & way more affecting than it has any right to be. Unfriended uses real-life programs like Facebook, Chat Roulette, and Skype to lure audiences into the sense of a familiar online experience, but what’s incredible is how it turns those brands into something sinister. Its greatest trick is how it finds terror & suspense in a lagging video stream or a program that stubbornly acts on its own. The frustration & helplessness of those situations are common to a lot of digital experiences, but they generally aren’t caused by a murderous, revenge-bent ghost. Much like with other intangible spaces like television static & the isolation of outer space, there feels like there’s a legitimate possibility of a ghost chilling there. If a ghost were to exist somewhere, a haunted Facebook account or Skype session seems to be as hospitable of a place as any.

Of course, as its ridiculous trailer indicates, Unfriended is just as faithful to horror genre clichés as it is to its real-time laptop viewpoint gimmick. Just like every sound & image on display is a direct result of the laptop’s user (or the ghost that haunts them), every character’s wretched personality & grisly death feels preordained by horror movie rules, as if the know-it-all dicks from Scream were calling the shots. The teens in Unfriended are cruel, air-headed twits that deserve what’s coming to them: contrived deaths-by-appliances that range from being as goofy as the rogue soda machine in Maximum Overdrive to some truly grotesque demises. It takes an already-won-over fan of the slasher genre to enjoy the space Unfriended occupies between legitimately freaky and violently goofy. It’s not going to win over casual passersby with insightful musings on teen bullying & the vulnerability of our online presence the way titles like It Follows & The Babadook attracted larger audiences with their respective explorations of teen sexuality & mental health. It’s not nearly as intelligent or tasteful as either of those films. Instead, it pushes a gimmick that could easily outwear its welcome into some really creepy territory, while keeping in mind that its limitations require it to be cheap thrills entertainment above all else. Despite my moderate-at-best expectations going in, I found this balance to be surprisingly rewarding and encourage fans of the genre to give it a shot, regardless of how they felt about the laughable ads.

-Brandon Ledet

Blame It On the Streets (2014)

/ swampflix / Leave a comment

EPSON MFP image

twostar

Keenon Dae’quan Ray Jackson, better known as YG, produced Blame It On the Streets, a short film that offers an interesting look into what his everyday life in Compton was like prior to his success and fame as a rapper. What was intended to be a short film was more like an extra long music video without the music. There is a soundtrack that was created to accompany the film, but the film only contains short clips of YG’s songs. The lack of music was disappointing because the film was intended to illustrate the meanings behind several of his songs, such as “Meet the Flockers,” but it’s difficult to make that connection without the songs actually being in the film.

Blame It On the Streets wasn’t very good, but I highly doubt that YG wanted to make a cinematic masterpiece. The acting was very bland and the storyline was sort of all over the place, but despite all of its flaws, the film did hold my interest for its entire 28 minutes. There was a drive by, a high-speed police chase, a robbery, and loads of inappropriate language, so there was never a dull moment. One of my favorite scenes was when YG and his pals robbed a home in an Asian neighborhood in broad daylight. They didn’t have any gloves to mask their fingerprints, so they wore long black socks on their hands. It really lightened the mood.

Blame It On the Streets is currently streaming on Netflix.

-Britnee Lombas

Wyrmwood: Road of the Dead (2015)

/ swampflix / 2 Comments

EPSON MFP image

twohalfstar

The ads for the recent horror comedy Wyrmood: Road of the Dead had me expecting a low budget, “sweded” version of Mad Max: Road Warrior, not necessarily because it was filmed in Australia or included the word “Road” in its title, but because of the film’s costume design. The characters were shown suited up in makeshift armor composed of protective sporting gear like hockey masks & football pads, as if they were preparing to play some kind of Mad Max-themed organized sport. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what’s going on here. Instead, Wyrmood apes a completely different genre franchise: Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead trilogy. Had I better prepared myself for the film’s zany zombie comedy tone, I may enjoyed it slightly more than I did, but there’d still be the underlying problem that at this point in time, the world isn’t in any particular need of another straightforward zombie exercise, goofy or not. There are surely still die-hard fans of the genre that will enjoy Wyrmwood for its undead antics, but for everyone else the film has a lot of potential to feel almost entirely pointless.

That’s not to say there aren’t some original concepts in Wyrmwood’s zombie-infested world. There are some entertainingly outlandish ideas about using zombies as an alternative fuel source, a still-alive human who can control the zombies through a telepathic mental connection, and how a person’s blood type can affect their chances of infection, but a few fresh details aren’t really enough to distinguish the film from the run-of-the mill titles of its genre. This more-of-the-same vibe is most apparent during flashbacks to the initial outbreak, a story we’ve all seen told many, many times before. The best chances the film has of standing out on its own as a unique property are in its goofball humor or its incredible costume design, but as mentioned before, even those elements feel familiar to the work of Army of Darkness’ Sam Raimi or Mad Max’s George Miller. The most unique element in the entirety of the film, then, is a mad scientist who schedules disco breaks in his back-of-a-truck laboratory (when he’s not torturing both the alive & the undead), but his presence isn’t of enough consequence to make too big of an impact.

I’m willing to chalk up my disappointment with Wyrmwood as a personal problem and the film’s. I’m sure there are plenty of people for whom another straightforward zombie comedy sounds like a fun-enough endeavor (even with its preference for CGI blood splatter over practical effects). I’ve even enjoyed a few recent ones myself, like the zom-com titles Warm Bodies & Life After Beth, but I felt like those brought a lot more fresh ideas to the table. Wyrmwood is more concerned with having fun than having something interesting to say, which is a generally admirable approach to any genre, but just doesn’t add up to enough here. It would take someone with a certain level of reverence for the inherent charms of the zombie genre to not mind watching more of the same at this point, goofy antics or not. I just didn’t have it in me.

-Brandon Ledet

The Duke of Burgundy (2015)

/ swampflix / 24 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fivestar

It’s difficult to explain in print exactly why, but Peter Strickland’s The Duke of Burgundy may be the most uncommercial film about a BDSM-leaning lesbian relationship possible. Although Strickland’s film has sensuality to spare, it deliberately strays from being exploitative, choosing to explore the central couple’s universally relatable struggles with selflessness & compromise instead of engaging in typical blank leering. There’s a sexual element at play in nearly every scene, but the film is more romantic than voyeuristic. The Duke of Burgundy is a portrait of a long-term relationship’s struggling to find balance, with the more unique elements of the role playing games shared by its same sex partners functioning more as a detail that provides specificity than as an overwhelming fetishistic obsession. Strickland has found a balance here that threatens to tip in a disastrous direction at almost every turn, but instead holds steady, much like the romantic balance found within the film’s central relationship.

It’s not only the refusal to perv out that will keep The Duke of Burgundy from reaching a mass scale audience. It’s also a deliberately “artsy” film that luxuriates in its own gorgeous images & atmosphere, like a sex-tinged The Spirit of the Beehive. Strickland carves out a natural world here (as he did before in last year’s Bjork concert film, Biophilia Live), filling the frame with running water, wriggling insects, rustling tree limbs, and beating wings of moths & butterflies. So much of the film is composed of nature, books, lingerie, and women (I don’t think a single man appears on-screen), that a distinctly insular vibe is achieved, as if the entire film takes place within a cocoon. It attempts more of a preciously delicate visual aesthetic than it does a traditional, straight-forward narrative.

The Duke of Burgundy’s varied shots of a butterfly & moth filled specimen room sets a tone for how the film operates. It’s a narrative that relies on repetition & ritual, much like the repetition of a specific butterfly specimen is repeated within the display cases. Similarly, each image is tacked to the wall, hovering to be appreciated like a precious, organic object. Strickland finds emotional resonance in the film’s central relationship, but he also spends inordinate amounts of time reveling in the textures of the world that surrounds them. Filming the couple through mirrors, fringes, and fabrics, Strickland finds the same reverence for the sense of touch here that he did for sound in his 2013 ode to giallo, Berberian Sound Studio. It’s a challenging prospect for viewers, but the rewards are glorious.

Warnings of tasteful sensuality & highfaluting cinematography aside, The Duke of Burgundy is a lot more playful than you would expect from art house fare of its caliber. Sure, the film has a stuffy, old-fashioned vibe with interiors that are far more likely to conjure the words “parlor” & “boudoir” rather than “living room” & “bedroom”, but it also lets on that it’s self-aware of that vibe as early as the opening credits when it provides a title card that reads “Perfume by Je Suis Gizella.” Also, although the film’s central BDSM relationship has a serious issue at the heart of its struggles with power balance , the movie finds plenty lot of effortless humor in that conflict. The emotional tug of war at the heart of the film’s romantic conflict reminded me a lot of a poem deceased artist Bob Flanagan reads in the documentary Sick that starts, “Smart-Ass Masochists: Those are masochists who can take anything– can take anything they tell you to do. Anything I tell you to do I’ll do it just for you.” The power dynamics of a BDSM relationship are more complicated than they may first appear to an outsider and The Duke of Burgundy has a lot of fun playing that aspect for both humor and emotional resonance.

It’s incredible that The Duke of Burgundy never loses its balance. It’s an affecting story about true love, but it also sports piss jokes. It’s a movie that features kaleidoscopic cunnilingus, but it never approaches being salacious. It values strong, isolated images over plot & pacing, but never feels like a slog. It’s a well-made, satisfying film that simultaneously stimulates the intellect and entertains on a simple, surface-pleasures level. In short, it’s a fantastic, must-see film that will find you saying “Thank you so much. This is all I ever wanted,” even before one of the protagonists gets to say it first.

-Brandon Ledet

Appropriate Behavior (2015)

/ swampflix / 13 Comments

EPSON MFP image

fourhalfstar

It’s difficult to describe Appropriate Behavior without using titles like Broad City & Obvious Child as reference points, but those comparisons truly do the film a disservice, as it’s much more emotionally satisfying than either of those titles (both of which I like very much). True, Appropriate Behavior is yet another raunchy, sex-obsessed comedy-drama centered on a New York City woman-child struggling to figure her shit out, but there’s something uniquely direct & honest about its approach to this aesthetic that distinguishes it from its peers. Its authenticity might have a lot to do with the overall strength of the writer/director/actress Desiree Akhavan, who delivers the material as if she’s lived it before, but what’s really arresting is the crippling, all-too-common sadness that anchors the story. The details of the protagonist’s Shirin’s lifestyle & personality may be specific, but her heartache is universal & familiar.

Shirin is a young, bisexual Brooklynite party girl with a journalism degree & Persian heritage. Not everyone is going to relate to certain aspects of her sex life, such as safe-words, strap-ons, group play and hiding her sexuality from her Iranian-born parents.  However, the film’s central romantic conflict is an about as universal as they come. Appropriate Behavior details the depressing, gradual detangling of two people exiting a long term relationship. The film thankfully doesn’t dwell solely on the couple’s post break-up gloom, but instead adopts a flashback structure that allows it to show the former couple in better times, like in a flirtatious exchange when the first meet where Shirin says, “I find your anger incredibly sexy. I hate so many things too.” When the broken relationship Shirin’s mourning is first detailed it looks too toxic to be worth the heartache. The flashbacks reveal that it was at one time something playful, something worth saving. It allows the film to run through the entire cycle of a romantic tryst from first meeting to fucking to fighting to eventual dissolution.

Although the universal relatability of this cycle is what makes the film affecting, it’s the specificity of Shirin’s world that makes it special. The film’s Brooklyn setting provides a lot of room for lampooning of ludicrous personalities like social justice comedians, Kickstarter gurus, pothead businessmen, and absurdly pretentious performance artists. Shirin’s open, playful sexuality is an invitation into a world of group sex, kink play, and drag queens. Her Persian heritage is a window into both the culture’s familial intimacy & rituals as well as its malignant homophobia. At the center of this Venn diagram is a very relatable Shirin. She calls Brooklyn hipsters out on their nonsense, asking  “What is up with your placid disinterest in everything?” She laughs in the faces of people who take their kink play seriously and finds a way to reconcile her sexuality with her family in a somewhat disheartening “don’t ask, don’t tell” type of equilibrium.  A lot of Shirin’s life goals amount to “a good time”, which is more than understandable for a woman in her twenties.

It’s incredible how much Shirin’s zest for fun shines through when Appropriate Behavior finds her in such a dark time. It’s a familiar balance to anyone who’s experienced true heartbreak: trying to party away the pain like it doesn’t matter, but the superficial hedonism always feeling empty. She pretends like she doesn’t care, but she continuously ends up alone & hurt after the high. No matter your relation to the specifics of Shirin’s background & lifestyle, it’s easy to see yourself in her sadness when she curls up in a ball and says, “I’m going to lie here and forget what it feels like to be loved. Could you please turn off the light?” It’s a sadness that feels like it’s never going to fade, but it always does . . . eventually. Shirin can’t move past it until she gets wrapped up in her own project, a distraction that finally allows her to let go of the past. The thing that saves her? An elaborate fart joke. That’s the exact kind of clash between emotional devastation & goofball irreverence that makes Desiree Akhavan’s debut such a strong, relatable film, even for those worlds apart from her protagonist’s exact circumstances.

-Brandon Ledet