Topping from the Bottom

Movies: The Duke of Burgundy

How can I express the beauty, the ecstasy, of watching a film like The Duke of Burgundy? Director Peter Strickland pulls the ultimate bait-and-switch with this lovely, dreamy love story. Ostensibly an erotic story of a sadomasochistic relationship between two women, Duke has no nudity, very little of what most people would consider "sex", and not a single male character--not even a male extra. Folks who show up to see hot girl-on-girl action will be surprised by this supremely arty film with an extraordinary soundtrack, over-exposed cinematography that recalls both Italian giallo horror films and 70's arthouse porn, and a deeply relatable (for all its bizarreness) love story about what it means to make sacrifices for the sake of a lover's desires.

The film opens on a woman, Evelyn (Chiara D'Anna), biking to Cynthia's (Sidse Babett Knudsen) home, where she is chastised for being late and put to work scrubbing the floors. It becomes apparent that the two are engaging in sadomasochistic play, with Evelyn as the submissive and Cynthia as the dominant. But when the two reenact the the same scene a second time, only this time shown from Cynthia's perspective, we can see that it is in fact Evelyn who is engineering these games, down to the very lines Cynthia says to her. Evelyn gets off on being degraded, but it is Cynthia who struggles with living up to her lover's exacting standards. The film handles this story with genuine humor, such as when the two have a consultation with a woman who creates bondage furniture. This may be the most sophisticated film ever to include the phrase "human toilet".

What's even more interesting about The Duke of Burgundy is the dreamlike fantasy world in which is takes place. I mentioned before that there are no men in this movie, but it goes beyond a simply casting choice. In the world of The Duke of Burgundy, men don't even appear to exist. Likewise, children don't exist. Work or normal jobs don't exist. All the characters appear to be entomologists, or at least moth and butterfly enthusiasts. When Cynthia and Evelyn aren't playing their kinky games at home, they're attending lectures about various types of moths. ("The Duke of Burgundy" is actually the common name of a species of butterfly).

The film is set in the past, but it's not clear exactly when (I'd say early 1960's, based on the clothes, but the decade is besides the point). It's also set somewhere in Europe, but never revealed where. All of these choices are deliberate ones on the part of Strickland, who, by creating a single-gender utopia where there are zero obligations to work and family, strips away all the noise that accompanies conversations and stories about love. It comes down to two people who desperately love each other despite being mismatched in a few big ways. One scene that is both heartbreaking and funny is when Cynthia tries to tell Evelyn how much she loves her, only for Evelyn to ask Cynthia to talk degradingly to her so that Evelyn can get off to her lover's cruel words. Anyone who has accommodated a partner's fantasies, despite not being into them, can relate to this scene, and it shows that in order to make a relationship work, sometimes one must "play along" to bridge the gaps between one and one's partner.

Dedicated cinephiles will, I think, be naturally drawn to The Duke of Burgundy for its style and homage to overripe 1970's Euro arthouse erotica as well as the sheer uniqueness of Strickland's vision. Other viewers, I'm not so sure. While I certainly found the movie entertaining, it takes a lot of patience. Watching The Duke of Burgundy is closer to the experience of visiting an art museum and slowly savoring the works of art. But, like the S&M games Cynthia and Evelyn indulge in, it may simply be that it's not for everyone, but for the right audience it's heaven,

Grade: A+

A Mishmash of Movies

Movies: Cheap Thrills, The Guest, The Hunt, The Internship, Life After Beth

I've been asked repeatedly by a colleague who reads my blog when I'm going to write some more reviews, and, indeed, I do need to catch up! Here's some stuff I've seen in the past few months and haven't had the time to review:

Cheap Thrills

This gimmicky thriller is entertaining, but ultimately insubstantial. Directed by E.L. Katz (this is his freshman effort), Cheap Thrills finds blue collar family man Craig (Pat Healy) fired from his job and on the verge of being evicted from his apartment. Rather than face his wife and toddler son, Craig goes to a bar where he runs into old friend Vince (Ethan Embry). After commiserating, the two make the acquaintance of a couple, Violet and Colin (Sara Paxton and David Koechner) who make no secret of their abundant wealth (they order a $300 bottle of tequila for the table).


When they offer to pay $50 to the man who does a tequila shot the fastest, and then up the ante to offering $100 to whomever can get a girl in the bar to slap his face, Vince and Craig realize that this couple might be the ticket to easy money. Craig is hesitant at first, unwilling to participate in some of the more vulgar dares, but when Vince makes it clear that he's game for anything, Craig's sense of competition kicks in. The foursome retreat to the couple's opulent house where the "fun" continues as the dares get weirder and the stakes higher.

I enjoyed Cheap Thrills despite its overall ickiness (how far will a man go to make some money when he desperately needs it? What is the price of his soul I ask you!?). Pat Healy and Ethan Embry are great foils for one another, with Healy's uptight (yet far more desperate) Craig getting more and more irritated by Embry's impulsive and vindictive Vince. Koechner, probably best known for his role as Champ Kind in Anchorman, is gregarious and bizarre as the cocaine-snorting Colin, and Paxton as his wife Violet is an enigma--a woman who barely speaks and has a dead-eyed 1,000-mile stare but who may, in fact, be running the show.

Good for some harsh, mean laughs and not much else.

Grade: B

***

The Guest

Well, I watched The Guest about a million years ago, so I'm not sure how accurately I remember the plot, but the overall impression I had of it was that it was underwhelming and disappointing given the very positive critical reviews it received. The Guest is directed by Adam Wingard, who also directed the excellent and smart indie horror movie You're Next, and the two films are stylistically similar. Dan Stevens, taking a giant leap away from his most famous role as Matthew Crawley on Downton Abbey, plays David, a soldier recently returned from Iraq. He drops in unexpectedly at the home of the Peterson's, who lost their son, Caleb, in action.  David claims to have known Caleb and is indeed in a photo with Caleb and a few other soldiers. The Peterson's warmly welcome David into their home and tell him to stay as long as he likes.

But, surprise surprise, strange things start to happen. For one, David takes the Peterson's younger son, Luke, under his wing and shows him a few self-defense moves after he learns that Luke is being bullied at school. Fair enough. But then he takes the underage Luke to a bar where he knows the bullies will be and antagonizes them by buying them girly drinks and flirting with their girlfriends. When the bullies start a fight, David beats the shit out of every one of them, destroying the bar in the process..and throws down a couple hundreds on his way out for the bartender's trouble. So obviously something is amiss with David.

The Guest is one of those annoying movies where something is obviously wrong, but only one person can figure it out while the rest of the cast is oblivious. In this case, daughter Anna Peterson (Maika Monroe, most recently in It Follows), catches on pretty quickly that David is not being 100% honest about his past. She calls a military base to ask about David and the base tells her that the solider by that name died a week earlier in a fire. Hmmm. Despite David's increasingly violent and erratic behavior, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson refuse to believe that David is anyone but the person he claims to be--a friend to their beloved, dead son.

I didn't really buy the premise of The Guest and I found the ending to be confusing and unfulfilling. There is, in fact, and explanation of who David is, but this explanation is tacked on near the end and the director makes the choice to tell the audience what's going on through exposition, rather than slowly revealing the truth over the course of the film. It's a classic example of telling rather than showing and it felt very lazy and haphazard to me.

The Guest was a mediocre film from an otherwise talented up-and-coming director. Let's hope his next effort is a little more polished.

Grade: C-

***

The Hunt

Oh man, you guys. The Hunt is good, but so depressing. The film stars Mads Mikkelsen (best known for his role as Hannibal Lecter on TV's Hannibal) as Lucas, a soft-spoken, divorced kindergarten teacher. Klara, the daughter of his closest friend, is one of the pupils in the kindergarten and takes a real liking to Lucas. She gives him a valentine and then, while playing, kisses Lucas on the lips. Lucas tells her she should only be kissing her mom and dad and asks if she wouldn't like to give the valentine to one of the boys in the class. Understandably embarrassed, Klara tells a lie to the director of the kindergarten, saying that Lucas is the one who gave her the valentine and kissed her.

The director, shaken, invites a police officer to interview Klara. He asks her leading questions which only appear to damn Lucas more. The audience knows that Lucas is innocent and has no sexual interest in children, which makes his public shunning all the more awful to watch. It would have been interesting if the audience didn't know for sure whether Lucas was innocent or not. But because we do know that he is innocent, the story takes on a bit of an apologist bent towards suspected sex offenders, implying that the only wafer-thin safety net between an upstanding citizen and a hated scapegoat is the word of a child. Indeed, the true criminals in this film are the adults that push Klara towards lying about what Lucas did, even as she starts to protest that she "made up a story".

This is a difficult film to watch because you can't help but sympathize with Lucas' friends and neighbors who start to turn against him. After all, if a child said she saw *your* friend's penis, wouldn't you start to question everything you know about your friend? You don't want to be the last person to stand up for a pedophile.

The Hunt stands on its own as a solid, effecting drama, but it also works as a kind of public service announcement, warning us to be very careful in how we approach accusations of child abuse. Our instinct is to protect the child, no matter the cost to the adult accused. But our own country's history of getting carried away with baseless accusations of abuse shows that we'd do well to be extremely cautious before we start a witch hunt in the name of righteousness.

Grade: B

***

The Internship

The Internship is a bullshit comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson about how INCREDIBLY AWESOME Google is and how Google's workplace model is the best and Google's employees are the best and if you're a snob or hate nerds, then Google hates you. Because this is a PG-13 movie, Wilson and Vaughn don't have full range to use their raunchy humor, thus the film comes off as toothless and formulaic. It's directed by Shawn Levy, and if you look at a list of his films, you pretty much know what the plot arc of The Internship will be: a couple of goofballs try to make good with a group of misfit friends and after some mistakes and hard lessons they succeed, much to the chagrin of the bad guy.

But the worst thing about The Internship is how it's an entire movie created to kiss Google's ass, as if Google doesn't get enough blind worship in reality. If you want to watch a two-hour commercial for a product you already use, then The Internship is right up your alley!

Grade: D+

***

Life After Beth

I really wanted to like this movie because it stars Aubrey Plaza as a zombie, but it just didn't do it for me, although it does take the zombie genre in a different direction. Plaza stars as Beth, a young woman who dies from a snake bite at the beginning of the movie and then crawls out of her grave and makes her way back home, to the shock and delight of her parents (John C. Reilly and Molly Shannon). Beth has no recollection of dying...her mind is stuck a month or so in the past. Beth's boyfriend, Zach (Dane DeHaan...who looks like a younger, but more balding, Leonardo DiCaprio), is confused and upset when he realizes Beth is back, mainly because it's impossible to return from the dead. When Beth's behavior becomes more and more erratic and violent, only Zach is willing to face the reality that Beth belongs dead--a reality her parents will not accept.

Life After Beth's treatment of zombies is really unique---they start out normal when they first awake from death, but become increasingly erratic, almost as if their brain is still decaying even if their body is up and moving. Beth is super horny and super strong. I get the horniness--maybe a zombie is reduced to his or her most basic instincts: anger, hunger, and a desire for sex. But the super strength? Don't know where that comes from.

The most annoying aspect of Life After Beth, and what kept me from fully enjoying the movie, is literally every other character besides Beth. Plaza as Beth is great, and perfectly cast. DeHaan's Zach is weird and histrionic. All the parents (Beth's and Zach's) don't act remotely like real parents. Zach's brother is complete weirdo. I have a special hatred for movies where people don't act like people. Basically everyone in this movie was miscast and given weird motives, lines, and quirks that didn't line up with how people would actually behave in this (admittedly, fantastical) situation--except Beth. When the most believable character in your movie is a zombie, you have a problem.

But an attempt at a unique vision, some really funny and affecting moments, and of course the great Aubrey Plaza, keep Life After Beth from being a total disaster.

Grade: C

Sexually Transmitted Demons

Movies: It Follows

Warning: I will describe the plot of It Follows below, which might be inherently spoiler-y for some. If you want to see this film with a blank slate, stop reading and see it now.

Director David Robert Mitchell's sophomore effort, It Follows, is a masterpiece of horror cinema. It is wickedly inventive and scary, terrifying the audience from start to finish with well-earned scares and minimal gore. It's also beautifully shot and naturalistic, with an excellent original score that only adds to the tension. Never have I been so excited to see a movie that made me want to curl into a fetal position in my theatre seat.

Taking place in the suburbs of Detroit in an indeterminable time period (all the TVs have rabbit ears and the characters have polaroids hanging in their bedrooms, yet one character has a futuristic smartphone-type device with her at all times), It Follows makes the average and the mundane terrifying and seemingly safe locations very much unsafe.

Jay (Maika Monroe) is a high school student seeing a handsome 21-year-old, Hugh (Jake Weary), who acts suspiciously jumpy at their date to a movie. The two wind up having sex in the backseat of his car, after which he reveals to her that he has passed on a curse. Jay will now be constantly pursued by a thing--a thing that can take any form, even the form of someone she loves--until it catches her or until she passes the curse on to the next person she sleeps with. This thing, and it's never explained exactly what it is, will never stop pursuing her, but it will do so by walking. This means that if Jay gets in a car and drives far enough, she can buy some time before it catches up to her. However, if the thing catches her and kills her, the curse reverts back to the last person who had it (i.e. Hugh), so although she can pass it on, there is always the danger than it could come back at any moment.

A couple more rules: only people currently afflicted or previously afflicted by the curse can see the thing, and there is no way to kill it or stop it.

The description of the plot sounds both silly and mind-bogglingly on-the-nose (something that you can't kill, but that can kill you, which is passed on via sexual activity? Hmmm...sounds familiar). But trust me, It Follows is genuinely smart horror. After you gets a taste of what this "thing" is, you can't help but scan the screen for signs of it slowly walking toward the camera. Some forms the thing takes are not very scary (a girl in a white dress), while others are fucking nightmares (an extremely tall man with no eyes)--and you never know what form it will take next.

Mitchell utilizes camera movements and angles to maximize the tension without resorting to cheap jump scares (although I certainly jumped and shrieked a number of times). The absolute relentlessness of the pursuit of the victim by the thing imbues even quiet moments in the film with a sense of danger. The result is a film that feels very fresh and different while also scaring the fucking bejesus out of you.

The obvious metaphor of the film is one of sexual danger and disease, but it's interesting that the cure is more sex, not less. In many horror films, teenagers are punished with death or violence for being sexually active. In It Follows, teens are both punished (by receiving the curse) and rewarded (by escaping it for a while by passing it on) for engaging in sexual activity.

But there is a deeper symbolic meaning to this curse. It is about the inevitability of death and the terror in not knowing when and where it will occur. One character reads a passage about torture and pain from Dostoevsky's The Idiot near the end of the film:

"But the most terrible agony many not be in the wounds themselves but in knowing for certain that within an hour, then within ten minutes, then within half a minute, now at this very instant – your soul will leave your body and you will no longer be a person, and that is certain; the worst thing is that it is certain.”

 The themes of It Follows do, indeed, lack subtleness. Sexual terror. The grim reaper at your door. The journey to adulthood fraught with peril and dismay. The dawning realization that we only have less time to be alive, not more. But for a film with such obvious metaphors, It Follows is as singular a horror film I've seen in a very long while. And after a decade of torture porn like Hostel and Saw, I'm ready for an artful renaissance of the horror genre.

Grade: A-