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We all think we know Faust. The guy who sold his soul to the devil, right? But before there was Christopher Marlowe’s dramatization of the tale of Faust, or Goethe’s two-volume epic Faust, or Rembrandt’s etching of Faust, or Liszt or Berlioz or even Randy Newman’s Faust, there was the actual guy. The historical record finds a Johan Georg Faust born in the last 13th century who went on to become a respected alchemist and astrologer, but who may also have been an outrageous con artist, claiming the ability to reproduce the miracles of Jesus Christ. Rumors suggest that he died in an explosion, a fate which his contemporaries attested to his ties with the devil. Before the century was out, tales of his extraordinary misdeeds had begun to proliferate; one such copy fell into the hands of Marlowe, and the legend of the man who made an unwise bargain with the devil began to spread.
The price of immortality is steep. “Faustian bargain” has become common parlance, and on this very site, two different interpretations of the Faust myth are currently under consideration for eventual induction into the Apocrypha, including a Jan Svankmajer-directed surreal mix and a version of more recent vintage from Russia. Today, let’s dive into a couple more such interpretations, one attempting to faithfully deliver the classic tale with what were then newfangled tools of cinema, while the other takes what it wants from the myth to reach its own, not-especially-lofty ends.
PLOT: Heaven and hell make a wager over the fate of Faust, a pious man who sells his soul to the devil to save his city from the plague.
COMMENTS: The short directorial career of F. W. Murnau is so loaded with classics — Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, Sunrise, Tabu — that a remarkable achievement like Faust could easily get lost in the shuffle. The film more than earns its place in this august company, though, with style to burn. Though the tale is familiar and the visual gimmicks are naturally dated, there’s a freshness to this telling that sidesteps a lot of the expected reservations.
PLOT: Young teenager Alpha gets a homemade tattoo, and her doctor mother obsesses over the possibility that she may have contacted a disease that will turn her into a statue; meanwhile, her heroin-addicted uncle comes to crash in their small Parisian flat.
COMMENTS: Alpha, the movie, is sick with contagion and addiction. In this diseased alternate-reality Paris, an Arab single-mom doctor tries to protect her improbably-named daughter Alpha from the dangers of the outside world. When the girl experiments with her limited teen freedom, getting a rustic homemade “A” tattoo on her arm at a party while intoxicated, her mother freaks out: where did the needle come from? Was it properly sterilized? Because, you see, there is a blood-borne disease going around which slowly turns those infected into statues. It primarily affects homosexuals and intravenous drug users, but unsanitary tattoo needles are also a disease vector. Fear that she may be deathly ill, and ostracism from her schoolmates once the rumors start circulating, aren’t the only stresses in Alpha’s life; her emaciated, estranged, heroin-addicted uncle, who is a stranger to her, has also moved into the small flat as he tries to get clean after a lifetime of relapses. At school, Alpha also keeps inconveniently (and humiliatingly) bleeding from her slow-to-heal tattoo wound; curious, although also seemingly tangential to the film’s main theme.
Despite the magical-realist plague and some confusing flashbacks, Alpha essentially plays out as a coming-of-age family drama. The three principals all do fine work, with Rahim (whose visible ribs suggest must have laid off baguettes for months in preparing for his junkie role) a particular standout. Cinematography is crisp, and needle drops from Portishead and Nick Cave add an undeniable (if possibly anachronistic) coolness factor.
Despite mostly eschewing the horror elements this time to focus on familial drama and teen anxiety, Ducournau retains her talent for conceiving scenes that are, on the surface, completely innocent, but which hint at deep perversions: in this case, a bit where Alpha’s jittery uncle white-knuckles his way through opiate withdrawal, while the anxious Alpha tries to fall sleep in bed next to him in their shared bedroom. The dreadful atmosphere of rising pandemic feeds into Alpha’s developmental worries. Growing independence, annoyance with lame and overprotective adults, and awkward liaisons with hormonal boys hardly override fears of death and an unstable adult roommate constantly on the verge of fatal overdose.
Alpha is well-written, well-acted, well-shot, well-scored, and has an serious emotional core… and yet, for some reason I can’t find it in my stony heart to unconditionally recommend it. The problem here is that, while Titane succeeded because it was a weird movie that slowly developed a deep emotional appeal, Alpha underwhelms because it starts as a humanist drama and then tacks on unnecessary surreal accoutrements. While Ducournau’s two previous efforts were weird movies that provided accommodations for art-house patrons, this one is an art-house movie offering accommodations for fans expecting something strange. Other than allowing an excuse for some cool makeup, the marbelizing symptom of the central disease adds little to the movie’s emotional or aesthetic effect. Had Ducournau made a standard drama, she might have gained a more appreciative audience… though at the cost of her reputation as one of the few provocateurs willing to ignore the inconvenient blah-ness of reality. Still, even if Alpha is not entirely a success, it’s a good film, and we’re happy to note Ducournau hasn’t sold out to the commercial allure of realist cinema. Let’s hope this is a temporary retreat, and she’ll relocate the bloody pulse of deep, dark weirdness for her next project.
COMMENTS: Body-swapping has a long tradition in cinema. From mainstream comedies (Penny Marshal’s Big) to horror/sci-fi flicks (Invasion of the Body Snatchers), it has established itself as a subgenre in our collective consciousness. More personal approaches can be found, too, using the premise to build an eccentric mood piece or a multilayered allegory with underlying social commentary (e.g. Under the Skin). The last category is where By Design belongs.
The plot follows Camille, a single woman with a life that seems unfulfilling to her, even if she tries to hide it. She is lonely; she has female friends, but jealousy often emerges between them. Her philosophical musings, expressed in a distinctly hypnotic voice, give a sense of her unique worldview and portray a character longing for something beyond her mundane life, something that will gain her attention and maybe even love.
She finds what she’s looking for in the most unexpected place, a shop selling designer chairs. From that moment on, everything plays out like a magical realist parable. She falls in love with a specific chair she cannot have, and through the power of her desire—there isn’t explicit lore here explaining the process—she swaps bodies with it so that they never have to part. And thus her odyssey begins.
After this transformation, the narrative splits, sometimes following chair-Camille and her encounters with a charming man named Olivier, at other times focusing on her now-vacant human body. The latter scenes recall the Theater of the Absurd, since most people don’t seem to realize something is off—not even her own mother. This suggests an underlying commentary on the way people prefer her as an object and an empty vessel rather than a person.
Kramer further develops her commentary on the objectification of bodies—both female and male—through Camille’s adventures as a chair. She is literally an object now, at the disposal of her new owner Olivier, a man who has himself been a victim of objectification and can understand her. Their weirdly erotic relationship suggests a deep understanding between them. All is not as it seems, however.
Kramer tells her story with theatricality from start till finish, culminating in short pieces of choreography. Most scenes take place in interior spaces. The furniture is of minimalist and modernist design. The acting could be described as melodramatic or over-expressive. This is clearly an expressionist artistic movie, not interested in submitting to naturalism. There are even POV shots from the perspective of a chair.
By Design will appeal to a variety of audiences: those seeking art-house curiosities with unique concepts will find it enjoyable, and its themes and the way it portrays human bodies —objectified, sensual, yet soulful—will intrigue those interested in the female gaze in cinema and feminist narratives.
PLOT: In the 1930s, a gangster’s moll is killed after Mary Shelley’s spirit possesses her and insults important men; soon after, Frankenstein’s monster convinces a mad scientist to animate her dead body as a mate for him, and the outcast pair go on a righteous killing spree.
COMMENTS: Just like James Whale‘s Bride of Frankenstein, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride! begins with a prologue in which author Mary Shelley describes her unwritten sequel to “Frankenstein.” Only this Mary is foul-mouthed, angry, and very dead. Despite this handicap, Mary is so determined to birth her untold story that she enters the body of 1930s Chicago party girl Ida as she dines on champagne and oysters in the company of gangsters, overriding the girl’s compliant meekness to speak through her, resulting in Ida being thrown down the stairs to her death. When Frankenstein’s monster (who’s quickly given the nickname “Frank”) comes to town to ask Dr. Euphronious to create a life partner for him, this is the corpse the pair dig up and reanimate. From that point on, Bride Jesse Buckley, amnesiac about her past life, will occasionally be possessed by Shelley’s spirit, surrendering her streetwise Chicago accent and suddenly speaking like a pissed-off Victorian Dorothy Parker on a three-day bender.
The ghost of Mary Shelley (who, recall, was not only a novelist but also the daughter of an anarchist philosopher and a feminist pioneer) quite literally haunts The Bride! Her presence is about one-third literal possession, one-third meta-narrative conceit, and one-third symbolic feminist consciousness, with a touch of comic relief. It’s a strange and bold gambit that sets the unevenly absurdist tone of this oddball Gothic romance, and it provides recent Oscar-honoree Jesse Buckley the chance to reaffirm the fact that she’s the most versatile and accomplished actress working today. Her performance is necessarily schizophrenic, with the script frequently requiring her to switch accents in the middle of a line. Buckley understands the assignment, throwing herself into the role with risk-taking abandon, especially considering that she’s coming off a prestige performance as William Shakespeare’s grieving wife. Here, she embraces the campiness of the material, and her quick turnaround shows a willingness to accept absolutely any challenge and adapt herself to the requirements of the script. Without her in the lead, The Bride! might well have fallen flat on its face, rather than being a divisive work with defenders and detractors on both sides of the aisle. Let’s hope that, having gotten that Oscar under her belt at an early stage in her career, Buckley remains eager to take on these kinds of outré roles.
The rest of the cast largely plays straight man to Buckley’s crazy. Bale is a fine Monster, digging into the traditional loneliness and dignity of the character, playing him in a realistic register and always willing to yield the spotlight to his co-star. Annette Bening’s mad scientist is eccentric enough, but again does not overshadow the Bride. Penélope Cruz andPeter Sarsgaard also play it straight as a pair of detectives on the monster couple’s trail, advancing the film’s secondary feminist subplot along more familiar lines. Gyllenhaal’s famous brother Jake delights in a small supporting role as a Gene Kelly type hoofer who dances in the fictional films beloved by Hollywood musical fanatic Frank.
Bride!‘s weirdo energy doesn’t stop with its wackadoo Mary-Shelley-possesses-a-moll premise or its Frankenstein-in-30s-America setting. Maggie Gyllenhaal directs The Bride! like the wannabe cult-film it seems destined to become, scene-by-scene and with little concern for superficial coherence. Sometimes characters are understandably horrified by Frank and his Bride’s gruesome appearances, while at other times these monsters who walk among us are treated as unremarkable. (Despite her cadaverous appearance and disheveled makeup, Buckley finds herself a target of numerous lechers.) At times characters appear onscreen in the various black and white features cinephile Frank insists on catching at every stop. The couple manages to stumble into the only 80s punk-scene venue in 1930s Chicago for a night on the town. An incongruous dance scene in he middle of a black tie gala in which the mischievous Shelley appears to possess the entire entourage serves as a centerpiece.
There’s enough crazy to go around, and along the way, there are as many references to Young Frankenstein and Bonnie & Clyde as there are to Bride of Frankenstein—and for reasons that barely fit, the film’s message is structured around an angry variant of Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to” philosophy. There is a “normal” story here, but Gyllenhaal eschews it in favor of a directorial philosophy fashioned around, as she has her Mary Shelley put it, being “disobedient and ungovernable.” It’s exactly the out-there directorial effort we would hope for from an actress whom we first noticed in Donnie Darko, and whose best-known acting credit is as a submissive in the BDSM comedy Secretary. Unfortunately, The Bride‘s box office performance suggests that Gyllenhaal may have already squandered her shot at being Hollywood’s next go-to female director, but we’re hoping she will continue to deliver the gonzo goods rather than reforming her “disobedient geometries” by chasing the almighty buck.
FEATURING: Yoon Jeong-hee, Lee Dae-keun, Lee Yeong-ha
PLOT: A corporate executive travels in search of her dead twin sister’s spirit, and her journey descends into a surreal nightmare.
COMMENTS: “I had read the original script. . . and I expected that once SplendidOuting was made into a film, then surely its ambiguous meaning would take on some clarity—so I watched it with that hope. But again, I still couldn’t clearly grasp what its meaning was supposed to be. In the end, I began to wonder if this film was meant to be some kind of puzzle: ‘Here’s the question, now you try to solve it.’” – Im Yeong, Film: Theory and Practice (March/April, 1978) (essay included in the booklet that comes with the Blu-ray)
Gong Doo-hee embodies the stereotypical woman who “has it all”: president of the appropriately named Royal Group, she presides over multinational business deals with the regal grandeur of a queen. When she isn’t expanding her company’s territory into far-flung parts of the globe, she lectures at a local women’s association, gives television interviews about feminism, and supports a charity for disabled children. But when she goes home to her own kids in her suburban mansion, she sleeps alone and dreams of a mysterious girl performing a ritualistic dance.
A widow, the one thing lacking in Gong’s life is a husband. We gradually learn, through voiceovers, how this troubles her; she’s clearly conflicted on whether or not to sacrifice her position in order to remarry. Whenever Gong is alone and we’re privy to her inner thoughts, a male voice narrates them. Are the men in her life still telling this liberated woman what to do? Or has she adopted a male internal monologue in order to increase her own sense of command and authority? This is but one of many fascinating ambiguities peppering the narrative, each of which reveals the complexity of Gong’s character, to the point of completely destabilizing her identity. When Gong consults a shaman about her repeating dream, she learns she had a twin sister who didn’t survive birth. The girl’s spirit still exists, but Gong needs to revisit the seaside community where she was born in order to communicate with her.
Just the thought of the seashore gives President Gong a headache, but she dutifully drives herself out of Seoul, leaving behind her chauffeur and her pampered existence. Upon arrival, she’s immediately recognized by the villagers who, in a disturbingly strange scene, surround her car and attack her. In the first of many sudden outbursts of violence against her, Gong’s “splendid outing” quickly takes a very dark turn. Mistaken for the runaway wife of a local islander, fishermen promptly catch her in a fishnet. After a beautifully noir-ish sequence where she’s suspended in a shadowy space by blood-red netting, a crew of female divers deliver Gong to her “husband.”
The rest of the film leaves the viewer wondering if this is a case of mistaken identity. Is Gong, the illustrious head of a corporation, now cruelly kidnapped and held hostage by a lawless populace? Or is she the village runaway, who abandoned her abusive husband five years ago to live an alternate life in the city? Or have she and her unborn twin somehow traded places in an act of cosmic reversal?
The plot hints variously at all these possibilities by selectively surfacing the protagonist’s memories. Day-dream(1964), a seriously weird film also about a woman undergoing a harrowing ordeal at the hands of a man with whom she has an ambiguous relationship, apparently influenced Splendid Outing‘s fractured structure. The quick edits recall Franco Arcalli’s work with Giulio Questi, as does the color symbolism of contrasting reds and blues. The soundtrack features a mix of traditional music and then-contemporary electronics, also similar to Day-dream‘s even more disorienting score. The changes in tone heighten the contrast between the past and the present, the rural and urban, but also underline moments of idealized femininity.
Director Kim intended the film as a political allegory, one so skillfully hidden within a modernist narrative that government censors failed to notice it. While knowledge of South Korea’s Yushin Era history adds even more layers to President Gong’s story, that background isn’t necessary to appreciate the film’s sense of style and mystery. Even though the ending provides a concrete answer for Gong’s surreal experiences, a profound uneasiness still lingers even after the outing’s over.
Splendid Outing initially found few screenings outside of its native South Korea. In 2026 Radiance rediscovered it and released it on Blu-ray. Unfortunately, it is not currently available for streaming.
Murnau is particularly proud of his in-camera effects, and he deploys these techniques with Zemeckisian fervor. An early scene in which the devil looms over a small medieval town like the most imposing mountain would have justified recalling the film a hundred years hence, but Continue reading THEY CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: FAUST (1926) / FAUST: LOVE OF THE DAMNED (2000) 
