Capsules

CAPSULE: THE EMPIRE (2024)

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L’empire

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Anamaria Vartolomei, Brandon Vlieghe, Lyna Khoudri, Julien Manier, , Camille Cottin

PLOT: Rival races of aliens, the Ones and the Zeroes, possess humans in a small French town.

Still from The Empire (2024)

COMMENTS: The Empire is an epic pitched in a very odd and minor key, and we expect nothing less from Bruno Dumont. It’s best described as a deadpan satire where alien factions battle for the fate of earth, but spend more time scouting, strategizing, swimming, and sleeping around than fighting each other. Why aliens chose a sunny and sleepy fishing town in northern France for the site of Armageddon is anyone’s guess—and maybe an essential part of the joke.

Much of what plot there is seems arbitrary and almost beside-the-point; in fact, it’s not entirely clear what the point is. The aliens possess villagers at random. The evil Zeroes have a prophetic Antichrist-like baby of destiny, but the good guy Ones don’t have much of a coherent plan to deal with it. They decapitate someone, maybe as a warning? An abduction resolves in an easily thwarted anticlimax. Mostly, the two teams cast sideways looks at each other when they pass in town, and take time out to confer with their respective leaders: La Reine for the Ones, who hovers in a cathedral spaceship complete with stained glass windows, and Belzébuth for the Zeroes, orbiting Earth in a craft that looks more like the palace of Versailles. The Empire‘s most fabulous character, Belzébuth dresses in a puffy white suit with a black bow tie, and is something like a cross between Evil from Time Bandits and a depraved Pee Wee Herman. Fans of Lil’ Quinquin‘s Captain Van der Weyden and Lieutenant Carpentier will be frustrated; the comic gendarmes put in a couple appearances, and Dumont teases that we may follow their investigation into the decapitation, but they actually play no role in the plot. (I’m a bit concerned about ‘s health—Van der Weyden barely mumbles one line here.)

The Empire is loosely a parody of science fiction epics—Jane and Rudy even wield (slightly modified) lightsabers—but it’s far from Spaceballs 2. If there’s a satirical target here, it’s the simplistic Manicheanism of humanity (and humanity’s blockbuster movies) . Despite their grand pretensions, the great cosmic struggle between the Ones and Zeroes is constantly subsumed into the minutiae of daily provincial life. Carnal attraction crosses battle lines. And the final showdown between the forces of good and evil is cheekily subverted, to say the least—as if both sides had been wasting their time all along.

The premise has a mildly amusing level of base absurdity, but the film is virtually free of laugh-out-loud moments. Fabrice Luchini’s clownish prince of evil amuses as he watches black blobs twerking, and a scene or two with Carpentier supplies possible chuckles. Still, the movie is well-shot and scored, the architecturally-minded spaceships are unique, and there are points of visual interest (and I’m not just referring to Vartolomei and Khoudri, who both have nude scenes and who are both stunning). It’s tempting to dub this The Empire Strikes Out. But although the mock-epic is a bit underwhelming, if considered as another thread in the tapestry of the expanding paranormal North of France Dumontverse, it’s scenic enough to make it worth a visit for the director’s fans.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a bizarre yet movingly humane satire that exposes the philosophical deficiencies of the movie genre that dominates global film culture… In Dumont’s eccentric way, The Empire forces the sci-fi genre to represent Western culture’s deepest mysteries. It’s like a Classic Comics version of a Robert Bresson movie with Spaceballs thrown in — a manifesto opposing the most corrupt and childish film genre.”–Armond White, National Review (contemporaneous)

The Empire [Blu-ray]

The Empire [Blu-ray]
  • The Empire
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Video Review

VIDEO REVIEW: EVOLUTION (2015)

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Russian 366 contributor Eugene Vasiliev offers another take on ‘s enigmatic 2015 feature Evolution, via his YouTube channel КИНО И ВЕЧНОСТЬ (“Turquoise Cinema Delirium”). Most of the content there is in Russian, but a few reviews are translated into English, and Eugene plans to start a separate channel entirely in English. (Note: the narration here is supplied by A.I.; although this results in a couple of mispronunciations and odd phrasings, this is an amazing and uncontroversially good use of the technology).

Capsules

CAPSULE: QUEER (2024)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Drew Starkey, ,

PLOT: The arrival of an enigmatic young man in 1950s Mexico City disrupts William Lee’s dissolute routine with the promise of companionship.

COMMENTS: Queer begins with a character sketch in the opening credits. Static shots of a small apartment reveal a cheap mattress, and a series of things—the first being a scuttling centipede. There are rumpled blankets, pairs of glasses, cigarettes (both stubbed-out and fresh), books, a passport and visa, a camera, a ViewMaster, and an array of pistols. Seven of them, to be precise, all nicely arranged. By the end of the opening credits, you know the character pretty well, even if you’re unfamiliar both with the author William Lee facsimulates, and the book the movie is based upon.

William Lee is an obviously intelligent but woefully uncharismatic fellow approaching or already in middle age. He has difficulty keeping still, and the camera mimics his erratic physicality by cutting from micro-shot to micro-shot as the protagonist bumps through his alcohol-fueled days and nights. It’s hot, and we can feel it alongside the array of gringos who’ve set up a little gay community in a borough of Mexico City that seems comprised exclusively of cheap bars, cheaper apartments, and by-the-hour hotels. We are there, with Lee, and can feel him either about to crack from his own tension or melt away into a puddle of boozy-Beatnik soup.

Queer, the film, has two halves: the first is a (very) awkward romance of sorts, wherein Daniel Craig’s Lee clumsily attempts to woo a young cypher named Eugene. We never learn too much about the guy, which is apt, in that one of the few things we do learn concerns his involvement with army intelligence during World War Two—and the staggering amount of lies he was tasked with sifting through. The second half involves a desperate Lee seeking an ancient drug in the Ecuadorian jungle to overcome his communication deficits, having—despite his self-perceived lack of persuasive powers—convinced Eugene to be his semi-paid companion. Surrealistic touches season the goings-on: disorienting flares of television static; a giant Lee looking in on a tiny Lee through a mock-up of an apartment building within his apartment room; and even a jaunt to see Cocteau’s Orpheus.

Guadagnino confronts the challenge of translating an incomplete Burroughs novel for the screen, and acquits himself well. I’m inclined to be forgiving toward the movie, as adapting any of Burroughs’ word-bursts (be they novels, anecdotes, memoirs, or otherwise) into semi-coherent narratives requires making difficult choices. Craig is a delight as the author, Starkey maintains a tight balance of charm and impenetrability, and Guadagnino keeps the look and feel on course even as the subject matter becomes increasingly slippery. With unrequited love (but plenty of sex), gallons of sweat (despite chills from junk withdrawal), and a time-bending soundtrack, Queer is an pleasing experience, even as it often crossed my mind that a man this addled shouldn’t be carrying around any firearms—much less seven of them.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Kuritzkes and Guadagnino diverge from their source material in making Lee’s quest for psychedelic fulfillment successful. Queer has a vein of David Lynchian surrealism (RIP) that starts with the inky, oil-painting cinematography of the nocturnal Mexico City scenes and grows more pronounced in the third act, when Lesley Manville does a darkly hilarious turn as a botanist living deep in the jungle. Without spoiling: Things get weird.”–Margot Harrison, Seven Days (VT)

Queer [Blu-ray]

Queer [Blu-ray]
  • Daniel Craig
  • Drew Starkey
  • Jason Schwartzman
  • Lesley Manville
  • Luca Guadagnino
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It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: ALUCARDA (1977)

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AKA Alucarda, la hija de las tinieblas; Innocents From Hell

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Tina Romero, Susana Kamini, , David Silva

PLOT: When orphaned 17th-century teenager Justine is shipped off to a convent, she meets up with the similarly motherless Alucarda— who happens to be the spawn of the devil—and soon the pair are wreaking havoc amongst the clergy.

COMMENTS: In the recent papal political potboiler Conclave, ’ Cardinal Thomas Lawrence makes the case for the critically intertwined nature of faith and doubt. Certainty, he tells his fellow cardinals, is dangerous because it nudges us toward arrogance and intolerance. “Our faith is a living thing precisely because it walks hand-in-hand with doubt. If there was only certainty and no doubt, there would be no mystery.”

One can scarcely imagine what Cardinal Lawrence would make of Alucarda, a film that hasn’t got a doubtful bone in its body. Given director Moctezuma’s history as an acolyte of Alejandro Jodorowsky, one might expect a certain amount of surrealism or mysticism, but this is a movie that fully believes in the devil and doesn’t find metaphor in a single damn thing. When a satyr cavorts with young girls, communion with Satan can be the only goal, and when you meet the story’s lone skeptic, a doctor who stakes out a position firmly in favor of science and reason, you can be sure that he will learn a harsh lesson in demonic possession and will drop his rational pose at a moment’s notice. Your sense of the film’s credulity is very dependent upon your willingness to believe that biblical evil lurks nearby awaiting its opportunity.

That amusingly unambiguous tone drives the film’s central performance, the teenaged, born-to-be-bad Alucarda herself, who exudes a nervous wild-eyed energy, desperate to win the favor of her potential new playmate Justine, and irrepressibly eager to start being naughty. (Romero, in her 30s, is an impressively convincing youth. Her counterpart, Kamini, is… not.) She’s like a toddler in her emotional purity, which gives her quest to upend the stodgy righteousness of the convent a potent charge. Unfortunately, that single-mindedness serves other characters less well, like the upright, uptight Father Lázaro (Silva, in his final role) who leads a round of self-flagellation to fend off bad thoughts, or the host of nuns whose performances must be reductively but accurately described as histrionic, writhing and shrieking in turn. The world of Alucarda is devoid of nuance, which is a time-saver, but makes the proceedings less engaging.

If there’s one word that sums up Alucarda, it’s “impatient.” Moctezuma aspires to the wildness of Argento or the eroticism of Rollin, but you get the meat of those filmmakers without any of the sauce. It’s mere minutes from Alucarda and Justine meeting a goat man to that same demon leading the two girls in a nude blood ritual, and a full orgy in the woods is just around the corner from that. Moctezuma is in such a hurry to get to the good stuff there that he dispenses with all of the build-up that makes the shock and gore so entertaining. Alucarda is a horror film without suspense, like frosting without cake or sex without foreplay.

As a delivery system for horror conventions, Alucarda is an impressively efficient machine, but that makes it more like a highlight reel or a series of clips on TikTok than like a real film. What it really needs is a little uncertainty, some sense of mystery to give it depth. As it is, Alucarda is like faith without doubt, which some among the religiously inclined might tell you is not faith at all.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“This movie is just plain weird… The story is really shallow (girl meets girl, girls worship Satan, everybody dies) and simplistic.” – Alec Pridgen, Mondo Bizarro

(This movie was nominated for review by arlecchinata. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Alucarda

Alucarda
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