I saw a Film!

Here we have a stark minimalist tableaux suggesting a strange and erotic tale. As we necessarily construct a “story” out of the events we’re shown, a drab world of nuns and judges surround a pretty young woman who swears she didn’t stab her roommate and playmate to death while the gorgeous victim, Nora, was bound to a bed.

While the events unfold, and they are largely prosaic nudity with a lot of red paint, we are uncertain of our lead, Alice’s, mental state. We’re asked to imagine she’s a witch, she’s innocent, she’s capable of causing horrible events with her voice, or she’s possibly trapped in a world of convents and endless eroticism.

When I say this thing is stark, I mean, there’s blank walls, blank expressions, no motivation and really no attempt to make this thing smoothly flow into a tale. We are forced to think of this thing as a tale. Our minds will work OT to try to create a tale out of it. As close as we are going to get however, is that a young woman has died (or did she?) and it’s possible Alice is responsible for the murder (Sid and Nancy style possibly).

The hardest part of all the empty and leading events is a soundtrack which is so brutally limited as to suggest we’re in the middle of a powerful horror film (or someone just forgot to bother with the sound). There are a large number of lovely ladies in this film and we get to see a lot of boobs. If boobs are your thing, and for many of us they are, this is a windfall. There’s also a definite fetishistic element around shoes, pretty feet, and a bit of sadomasochism. I’m not going to pretend I know what this thing is about, and I’m not entirely sure it’s meant to be understood. By the end we’ve come full circle and we’re imagining a kind of loop of accusation and bizarre artsy body painting and beauty worship.

When I watch these sorts of films I’m usually thinking about a director kind of masturbating away, metaphorically or in reality, as he gives us lovely women in various positions of semi-erotic suggestion. Alice paints the walls with her naked boobs, another beauty is bound and kneels before a chopping block with an ax embedded in it as though she’s awaiting her execution, bare naked women dangle, wiggle, and talk nonsense to nuns who smile at them and seem to ask if they can participate as well.

What is great about it is that it’s entirely unlike anything else. What’s difficult about it is that it definitely isn’t a traditional story, and there doesn’t seem to be any angle (unlike a Godard film that will have lots of political and social redeemable value).

Should you see it? On the pro side it’s Free on Prime, and a novel experience. On the con side it might kinda annoy or cause a nap (which it did for me).