All posts by Enar Clarke

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SPERMULA (1976)

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L’Amour est un fleuve en Russie

DIRECTED BY: Charles Matton

FEATURING: Dayle Haddon, ,

PLOT: A secret society, said to have developed supernatural powers, mysteriously disappears from New York in 1937, then reappears years later in rural France to spread their anti-love ideology.

Still from Spermula (1976)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Spermula has the unique advantage of being two very unusual and completely different movies; at least one version should make the cut. As conceived by the director, the original is art-house erotica about a cult of libertines who attain a higher plane of existence through renunciation of art and all emotional attachments, including love. The exact nature of their secret society remains vague, and with their elusive backstory, dedication to “immodesty” and disgust with l’amour, even the other characters in the film routinely refer to the protagonists as “weird.” The film was later redubbed for Americans as a softcore comedy.

COMMENTS: As if Ingrid (Haddon) and her cohort of glamorous female companions weren’t strange enough—either as psychic cultists or aliens in human form—the town they arrive in is already a pretty weird place. Run by a corrupt, model plane-obsessed mayor, Monsieur Grop, the residents all connect through a tangled web of political and personal relationships. As the Spermulites insinuate themselves into this incestuous milieu, Grop enlists their next door neighbor to figure out what’s going on with the suspicious new residents.

The Spermulites quickly identify the most repressed citizens as their targets: the cardinal’s submissive housekeeper; Madame Papadéus, a widow obsessed with turning her son into the spitting image of her dead hairdresser husband; Grop’s wife, who exists in an uneasy love-hate relationship with her husband. Caught among them all is Werner (Kier), the mayor’s equally shady assistant scheming to increase his own power.

Determined to marry Sala, Madame Papadéus’ daughter, little does Werner realize she’s already engaged in an affair with the gardener, along with her sister, Liberte (a woman who lives up to her name). Their cousin, Cascade, a Cinderella figure used by her family as a maid, conducts her own secret liaison with an artist, and the couple’s genuine feelings for each other prove highly problematic for the Spermulites’ mission.

The town’s residents also exist in a fraught dichotomy with Ruth’s, the local cabaret run by a black woman. As one of the performers, Ivan the magician (Pieral), candidly states, some people only care Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: SPERMULA (1976) →

Capsules

CAPUSLE: RETURN TO REASON: FOUR FILMS BY MAN RAY (1923-1929/2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Man Ray

FEATURING: Alice Prin, Robert Desnos, Jacques Rigaut, Man Ray

PLOT: Four experimental films form Man Ray shown in rhythmic sequence, set to a partially-improvised score by ‘s band SQÜRL.

Still from "Les Mystères du Château du dé" (1929)

COMMENTS: Though May Ray considered himself a painter, he experimented with photography for decades. In the 1920s, as part of his explorations, he decided to try his hand at making motion pictures. Paradoxically, he cut strips of film into their individual frames, dusted them with salt and pepper, covered them with tacks and pins, exposed them to light according to his Rayograph process, then spliced the images back together. La retour à la raison/Return to Reason (1923) was his first result, two minutes of visual chaos in which random objects and detritus dance across the screen.

Ray had originally planned to screen Retour with a performance by George Antheil, but the enfant terrible of avant-garde music failed to appear. Antheil’s atonal sound remains associated with Ray’s films (Kino Lorber previously released Return to Reason with an Antheil score, as part of the collection “The Silent Avant Garde,” in 2022). This latest release by the Criterion Collection provides a moodier, atmospheric take on Ray’s imagery, through SQÜRL’s signature feedback-laden guitars, electronic tones, and resonant drums. The score’s dirge-like cadences slow things down, encouraging the viewer to notice each intricate detail in every frame while falling under their spell.

Jarmusch, familiar to readers of this site as the director of Dead Man, is also a guitarist, and has written scores for many of his films together with musician Carter Logan. The duo’s sound, at times reminiscent of late ’90s-era Sonic Youth, wraps the listener in a sonic net woven of reverb and ambient drones. Electronic blips and beeps rise out of the static, like distant signals from sonar equipment; deep resonant tones echo like the moan of foghorns. A sudden metallic tinkling, like a forgotten wind chime on the porch of an abandoned house caught by a stray breeze, heightens the uncanny atmosphere.

The disc presents the films in rhythmic, rather than chronological order. The first, L’Étoile de Mer/The Starfish (1928), inspired by Robert Desnos’ poem, has the most coherent plot of the four. A man falls in love with a beautiful woman who gifts him a starfish in a jar. Filmed as though through a pane of rain-streaked glass, or from behind an aquarium wall, the impressionistic visuals come into focus only at key moments. The intertitles feature lines of the poem, but unlike in many silent films where the title cards explain the action, here text and image juxtapose each other in surrealistic fashion; for example, the phrase “women’s teeth are such beautiful objects” precedes a shot of the female character (portrayed by the famous Kiki de Montparnasse), lifting her skirt to adjust her stocking garter.

Emak Bakia (1926) follows. With financing from stockbroker Arthur Wheeler, and featuring his wife driving her Mercedes around Biarritz, Ray created another, longer experimental film (22 min.) in Continue reading CAPUSLE: RETURN TO REASON: FOUR FILMS BY MAN RAY (1923-1929/2023) →

List Candidates

APOCRYHA CANDIDATE: SHE LOVED BLOSSOMS MORE (2024)

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Agapouse ta louloudia perissotero

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She Loved Blossoms More is currently available for purchase or rental on video-on-demand.

DIRECTED BY: Yannis Veslemes

FEATURING: Panos Papadopoulos, Aris Balis, Julio Katsis,

PLOT: Three brothers try to cope with their mother’s untimely death.

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Hallucinating your dead mom as a talking vaginal flower, complete with glowing clitoris, might be a totally natural Oedipal response for a son still processing grief and loss. But when Hedgehog then makes a psychedelic drug from said flower so he can hold a séance with a transdimensional severed head to perfect his time travel experiments, things get pretty weird.

COMMENTS: You can tell life just hasn’t been the same for Dummy, Japan, and Hedgehog since their mother passed away. They try to maintain some semblance of normalcy, coming together for meals and decorating their house for the holidays as Christmas rolls around. But they inevitably drift apart into their own mournful rhythms. Dummy, a failed scientist, spends all his time making and taking pharmaceuticals, then sleeping in the family car with his hands tied to the steering wheel. Japan, the computer nerd, prefers to play chess online before getting drunk on cognac and passing out in the bathtub. Only Hedgehog feels seriously devoted to their family and their ongoing project: he even sleeps in their mother’s Art Deco armoire, the very piece of furniture the brothers are converting into a time machine so they can bring her back from the dead.

After a series of experiments, with variable success (one results in a chicken with its head in another dimension), Mom’s garden has become a pet cemetery (where she also lies buried). Her sons need more money for additional equipment, but Hedgehog avoids taking calls from Logo, their mysterious Parisian funder. Logo (Pinon, in an excellent cameo) has set a daunting deadline, and seems to have questionable motives of his own for pursuing time travel.

When Dummy brings his dealer/girlfriend Samantha to join the party, an increasingly desperate Hedgehog begins hearing his mother’s voice, begging him to bring her back. During a heavy trip she urges him to “try it” with the girl. Needless to say, Hedgehog doesn’t interpret “it” the way most people would; but do his subsequent actions disrupt the time-space continuum. Or is everyone still high on grave flowers?

Like , Yannis Veslemes clearly has a deep love of late seventies to early eighties cinema. A sensuous trippy vibe pervades Blossoms from beginning to end, but this is lo-fi sci-fi: a blend of neon light filters enhanced by distorted sound and visuals with the bluish static of cathode-ray televisions and glowing green text on early computer monitors. The strategic use of animatronics ups the weirdness factor as the plot veers into an uncanny valley. Veslemes may be the only contemporary director to have not only seen, but taken inspiration from the obscure films of (a close examination of the computer screen in the opening sequence reveals the user’s handle: “zoozero79”.)

Veslemes composed scores for films before turning to directing and, also like Cosmatos, he displays a interest a soundtrack that adds to the film’s unique ambiance. She Loved Blossoms More features mainly neoclassical compositions, with some electronics, but avoids clichéd over-reliance on imitating the stereotypical sounds of ’80s movies. The music always complements the visuals without trying to overpower the imagery’s otherworldliness.

The story provides no plausible explanation for how hooking electrodes up to a closet could create a time machine. Blossoms requires a healthy dose of suspension of disbelief, or perhaps outright cynicism. The characters’ plight generates sympathy; the retro technology on display leaves the viewer wondering whether we’re actually witnessing groundbreaking DIY research, or a family caught up in a collective delusion. As the identity of Logo and the backstory of Mom’s tragic death are gradually revealed, it only adds another layer to an already ambiguous reality.

As Hedgehog, Papadopoulos  gives an understated performance that sometimes recalls Jake Gyllenhaal in Donnie Darko, displaying a similarly creepy dead-eyed intensity. It’s an interesting point of comparison, given that both films explore ’80s nostalgia, weird physics, and altered states of consciousness, though in entirely different ways.

As with most time travel narratives, the story loops around on itself, but the ending is not quite the same as the beginning. You can’t travel through the back of the wardrobe and come out unchanged.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…gets super psychedelic and downright weird… for those viewers who are on its very particular wavelength, She Loved Blossoms More could be a soothing journey to a dark place within themselves, exploring the peripheral spaces just beyond memory, and that is worth the trip. – Josh Hurtado, Screen Anarchy (festival screening)

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ZOO ZÉRO (1979)

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DIRECTED BY: Alain Fleischer

FEATURING: , , , ,

PLOT: A singer spends a night trying to escape from her overbearing manager while pursued by one admirer who insists he heard her sing in a city she’s never been to, and another who claims he lost his voice when he heard she’d given up singing.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Have you ever thought to yourself, if only someone would make a Last Year at Marienbad/The Magic Flute mash-up, written according to the non-narrative principles of  Eden and After? They could have Catherine Jourdan in the lead as the “A” character, and Klaus Kinski as “M”. . . and why not set it in a grimy, late ’70s Paris overrun with rabid animals? Okay, you probably haven’t; but someone did, and that someone was Alain Fleischer. A director largely unknown in the English-speaking/Region A world, Fleischer moved in the same artistic circles as and . While he was clearly influenced by the same ideas as the better known Alains, Fleischer’s work is perhaps too weird to have been rescued from obscurity; all the more reason to give him some consideration.

COMMENTS: There are so many WTF elements in Zoo zéro I can’t possibly cover them all, but between the ventriloquist chauffeur who only speaks through his socialist revolutionary Donald Duck dummy, to a brothel where clients simply listen to prostitutes describing their actions from unlit rooms, practically every scene features someone, or something, inexplicable.

The opening credits sequence recall those of Eden and After‘s. The actors announce themselves by name, then begin reading texts featuring animals, including the biblical story of Noah and the Ark, and the French fairy tale about Reynaud the fox. Each actor keeps reading as another joins the chorus, until, by the end, the overlapping voices form an unintelligible cacophony. A fitting introduction to the experience of watching Zoo zéro: a movie so jam-packed with references and metaphors, its actual meaning becomes almost impossible to interpret.

Zoo begins at the Noah’s Ark nightclub on a rainy night. Eva (Jourdan), dressed like Liza Minelli in Cabaret, performs before an audience all wearing animal masks. A mysterious man later appears in Eva’s dressing room, saying she once knew him as Ivo (pronounced “Eevo”; all the characters have names beginning with vowel sounds and a majority begin with a long “e”.)

Ivo claims to have heard her performance in Salzburg, in The Magic Flute. Even though Eva says she’s never even been to Salzburg, Ivo has a recording to prove it. Uwe, Eva’s manager, takes possession of the tape and refuses to let her hear it.

The dialogue, while not as obscure as in Marienbad, never resolves Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ZOO ZÉRO (1979) →

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER SUGGESTED QUEUE: IT COULDN’T HAPPEN HERE (1987)

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“I’ve just been fishing with Salvador Dali. He used a dotted line. . . caught every other fish.”

DIRECTED BY: Jack Bond

FEATURING: Neil Tennant, Chris Lowe

PLOT: From West End towns with dead end walls, the Pet Shop Boys travel around England before ending up at King’s Cross; all the while, singer Neil Tennant recalls his childhood memories in a narrative postcard to his mother.

COMMENTS: By 1987 the Pet Shop Boys had produced two hit albums with a number of chart-topping singles but they still couldn’t afford the expense of touring. When a planned concert fell through, their manager suggested they make a film, something like did with A Hard Day’s Night. Director Jack Bond, whose prior credits included the documentary Dali in New York (1965) and a series of experimental films with Jane Arden, proved integral to the project. Structured as a road movie, Bond turns the film into a Surrealist game of free association. Though punctuated by popular songs, It Couldn’t Happen Here sank into obscurity after being panned by film critics.

Anyone expecting this to be a typical band film must have been surprised by a movie that’s anything but. It lacks concert footage and behind-the-scenes interviews; instead, the Boys meander through a series of vignettes. Lyrics suddenly crop up in the dialogue as spoken word poetry or snippets on the radio. Fans of Tennant’s literate compositions, in which love, romance, and commerce all intertwine, will instantly recognize them. To anyone less familiar with the music, the isolated refrains make the film even more enigmatic.

The road trip begins at the seashore. Tennant stops by a souvenir stand to purchase  bawdy holiday postcards. He reminisces about his family nearly being kicked out of a boarding house due to his bad behavior. The scene then cuts to Chris Lowe, narrowly escaping the same overbearing landlady after he throws his breakfast in her face. “Chrissy, baby,” she moans, “what have I done to deserve this?”

The present day continually blends with the past as Lowe joins Tennant at the seaside and a blind priest chases two schoolboys through a carnival. After Tennant recalls how his father once spent their family’s savings on a blue and cream-colored Ford Zephyr, the priest then reappears as a hitchhiking serial killer. While Lowe drives and Tennant lip-syncs to himself on the radio, the hitchhiker gleefully recounts his murderous exploits with Salvador Dalí as they continue their journey across the country.

A pitstop at a diner stars a ventriloquist’s dummy who rants about the nature of time, sparking an existential crisis in a pilot seated nearby. A plane and car-chase scene, reminiscent of North by Northwest, ends in front of a phone booth being vandalized by Neo-Nazis, who politely cease in their destruction so Tennant can call the landlady.

And so it goes, passing from one bizarre set-piece to another, the proceedings occasionally interrupted by MTV-style dance breaks. Tennant and Lowe retain deadpan expressions throughout, observing everything from a man on fire and zebra keepers with black-and-white striped faces with incurious nonchalance.

Re-considering It Couldn’t Happen Here, some commentators are kinder to it in hindsight, uncovering clever political critique lurking beneath the odd sensibility. Others are not so nice, declaring it a misguided foray best left forgotten. Dedicated fans of the Pet Shop Boys should seize opportunities to check it out on physical media or streaming; there’s a certain nostalgia to hearing the group’s hits again in this context. For others, it’s an interesting, if not entirely successful, attempt at making a film according to Surrealist principles; at least, that’s my impression.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the result is as idiosyncratic to the deadpan duo as A Hard Day’s Night was to the Fab Four. The film takes second place in a Fellini-style phantasmagoria of British seaside life, mixing past, present and abstract surrealism…”–Eddie Harrison, film-authority

(This movie was nominated for review by “Chris R.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Pet Shop Boys - It Couldn't Happen Here (Std Edition DVD + Blu-ray)

Pet Shop Boys - It Couldn't Happen Here (Std Edition DVD + Blu-ray)
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