Tag Archives: Amanda Kramer

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CAPSULE: LADYWORLD (2018)

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DIRECTED BY: Amanda Kramer

FEATURING: Ariela Barer, Annalise Barro, Ryan Simpkins

PLOT: Seven young women, unable to leave a house after an earthquake, descend into paranoia.

Still from Ladyworld (2018)

COMMENTS: A low rumble; growing chaos; a cacophony of destruction: all taking place during a black screen. A destructive earthquake traps eight young women in a house. Rubble gathers up to the window tops, blocking all known exits. We see none of this, but the impression is clear, the sensation of imprisonment rendered wholly through sound design. This background—creaks, crashes, and whirring blades of helicopter—traps us with these confined, forgotten women; a human-sound film score of yelps and bursts augments the dread. Ladyworld is an uncomfortable place, and misery for its inhabitants.

This riff on Lord of the Flies flips the script, gender-wise, exploring the trope from a wholly feminine perspective. Much is the same: feral tribalism bursts through a civil veneer, even in such a small group; spatial confinement melds with a growing hopelessness to trigger listlessness and psychosis, depending on the moment and victim; and sightings of a man lurking in the dark basement add an edge of terror to the ambient menace. By the film’s end, nearly everyone has lost it.

Amanda Kramer plays a risky game with her story. Its strengths and weaknesses are the same cards. There is much repetition—dialogue, montage, and shots—which at times grows tedious; but, that’s the point. Kramer emphasizes the differences between feuding factions—Olivia’s civil-minded, and smaller, cadre on the one side, and Piper’s gangster-clique on the other—more and more over time. Every corner of living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, closet, and, of course, the forbidden basement, becomes trashed, nicely reflecting the state of the party. We see these rooms and developments again and again. And again. You may want to scream, “Enough, already!” But just think of how the characters feel.

Ladyworld is up front in putting its characters and setting right in the title, and it delivers a discomfited vision. It is a film to be endured alongside the story’s victims. While it would have done well—maybe—to be trimmer by a quarter of an hour, it might had less impact. After the opening black screen shot and its destructive sound establishes the ambient tension, it only ratchets up. The audience bears witness to the strain until the unlikely, but apt, finale, when the ladies’ world bursts asunder.

Yellow Veil re-released Ladyworld on DVD and Blu-ray in January 2024, with alternate and deleted scenes, a director’s commentary, two Kramer short films, her otherwise unreleased debut feature Paris Window, and even more extras.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“...it proves its own surreal, savage and superbly performed creation… painfully real in its emotions yet dreamily unreal in its atmosphere, an effective and haunting combination which is heightened by image and soundtrack choices.”–Sarah Ward, Screen Daily (festival screening)

Ladyworld [DVD]

Ladyworld [DVD]
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: GIVE ME PITY! (2022)

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Give Me Pity! is currently available for VOD rental.

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Sophie von Haselberg

PLOT: A one-woman 1970s TV special slides into a psychedelic nightmare.

Still from Give Me Pity! (2022)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) nightmarish and always unpredictable, Give Me Pity! is a surreal showcase of female insecurity, acted out on a disco stage where glamour fades into mockery.

COMMENTS: Sissy St. Claire’s first prime time special (set in the indefinite late 1970s) takes quite a journey. Her opening monologue begins, creepily enough, with her dressed as a little girl, describing her dreams of someday having her own prime time special. In the closing monologue, she appears as an angel, reveling in the fact that she finally “made it.” Throughout, she’s a woman craving adulation, just like her inspiration in the entertainment field: Jesus. Yet the film’s overwhelming impression is not one of triumph or celebration, but of vanity: St. Claire’s own superficial vanity (there are lots of scenes of her staring into mirrors), and her vain dreams of immortality through celebrity.

The film is simultaneously a parody of 1970s celebrity specials and of confessional “one woman” shows (the type of off-Broadway performances no one ever attends, but knows about through sitcom punchlines). The production design puts us in an authentic kitsch nightmare during the musical numbers: glowing pink backgrounds, mirror balls, laser spotlights criss-crossing the screen, Sissy crooning disco ballads in a glittery jumpsuit as backup dancers parade in silhouette behind her. These productions alternate with sketch comedy scenes that go horribly sideways (the actress in the “psychic” sketch refuses to read Sissy’s palm because she has a “demonic” energy,  there’s blood on the envelope of one of the fan letters Sissy picks to read, a special guest stands up the live show at the last moment and Sissy has to perform both male and female parts.) Then there are Sissy’s monologues to the audience, which are, at the same time, boastful and needy, addressing the actresses’ insecurities about her appearance (a plastic surgery sketch is done in horror film style) and general angst (she sees both terrible posture and an existential void in an impression of her performed via interpretive dance.) Recurring motifs about longing for a child and early widowhood drip out, suggesting a possible backstory much different than the confident facade Sissy projects onstage. Oh, and if all this wasn’t enough, there are frequent glitchy bursts of buzzing video distortion and solarization and shots of a creepy-faced man waiting backstage, which grow into a full-fledged acid freakout late in the show. (The film probably would have been just as effective without the psychedelic frippery–the monologues and absurdist sketches are ominous enough–but hey, who’s complaining?)

Rather than a sketch of an established performer deteriorating from self-doubt, the entire special feels like the dream of an ordinary woman living a delusional fantasy of a fame she’ll never merit. St. Claire is attractive enough, but far from gorgeous; her singing and dancing is competent, but far from diva quality. She’s a creation of gilded glamour, a housewife covered in layers of barely-convincing glitz and sequins. In short, despite what the existence of a 2-hour block of TV programming devoted to her implies, Sissy seems nothing special. If this assessment sounds like I’m demeaning von Haselberg or her performance, that’s absolutely not the intent. Sissy St. Claire can’t be too good at what she does; that would undermine Give Me Pity!‘s entire theme of ambition outstripping reality. Von Hasselberg in fact hits a difficult mark here: she’s cast as a reputed superstar who lacks actual star appeal, a woman playing a part she doesn’t live up to. Her clearly-manufactured, forced-upon-the-audience charisma rings as hollow as the canned applause, which becomes tinnier as the night wears on. The fact that there’s nothing truly exceptional about either Sissy’s performance or her persona gives the film its pathos. Her tragedy is her yearning to be extraordinary, to be worthy of what all of us want deep down: a TV special that will grant us immortality, just like Sissy’s inspiration, Jesus.

Sophie von Haselberg is Bette Midler’s daughter (her mom is the kind of star who might have actually gotten a 2-hour special in 1979). Give Me Pity! was Amanda Cramer’s second weird movie of 2022—she also brought us the underrated and underseen Please Baby Please. She is definitely a talent to keep an eye on, assuming she can keep finding funding to put her oddball ideas onscreen.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… a wholly bizarre movie from start to finish, but with such a fully realized vision from Kramer and an entrancing lead performance, ‘Give Me Pity!’ is lovably unconventional.”–Louisa Moore, Screen Zealots (festival screening)

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CAPSULE: PLEASE BABY PLEASE (2022)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , Harry Melling, Karl Glusman

PLOT: A gender-bending leather gang awaken unfamiliar desires in a beatnik couple.

Still from Please Baby Please (2022)

COMMENTS: Please Baby Please is queer, defiantly so, in both the new and the old senses of the word. This movie is proud to be what it is—which is a perverted, experimental non-binary comedy/melodrama/musical, or something like that. This is a film that describes itself as featuring “bisexual lighting,” and that somehow makes perfect sense when you see it. It seems like the script was written to answer the question, what would happen if the leather daddies from Scorpio Rising took over the set of West Side Story?

That last connection is referenced explicitly in the movie’s opening scene, where a leather clad gang prowls the streets in finger-snapping rhythm. These aren’t the Sharks or the Jets, though, but the Young Gents, an ultra-macho bunch of reprobates with a dangerously non-hetero vibe. When happily (if platonically) married couple Suze and Arthur come across the gang standing over a couple of freshly beaten corpses on the street right outside their apartment, their libidos are separately ignited by the heart-pounding excitement. Please Baby Please doesn’t feature a lot of narrative; there is an arc to the couple’s journey, but most of it is revealed through oddball exposition (most of the characters in this movie talk like Dead End Kids enrolled in NYU’s Gender Studies masters’ program). Much of the rest comes in musical production numbers: Suze’s sexual awakenings are depicted in a series of musical fantasies, including one where the Young Gents take turns ironing her ass.  We’re also treated to interludes like a drag queen in a Bo Peep bonnet and flowery eyelids singing a love song in a phone booth. The fine musical accompaniment ranges from exotica to mellow acoustic bass jazz to poppy torch songs; the choreography is simple but effective, more dependent on the dancers’ outrageous wardrobes than on the moves they perform. True to the 1950s style, everything is repressed, and there’s little actual sex: we come upon two motorcycle dudes doing nothing more than hugging passionately in the men’s room. The characters do talk dirty, but in the context of gender roles rather than personal desires. Only the final scene breaks the no-onscreen sex rule.

Please Baby Please is obsessed with masculinity. Arthur has built his entire life philosophy around how doesn’t want to be a man, doesn’t want the pressure of always having to be a contestant in a toughness competition with other males. That doesn’t mean he’s not attracted to masculine surfaces, though; to the rippling abs, mesh-clad pecs, and leathery bulges of the Young Gents. The motorcycle gang stands for the masculine ideal in all its muscly, sneering, rough-mannered charm. In 1953, Marlon Brando in The Wild One evoked an outlaw desires for rebellion and domination in female audiences; Tom of Finland was simultaneously (and more lastingly) co-opting the same biker imagery for the gay subculture.  Please Baby Please is aware how ludicrous a caricature of manhood all this chrome and black leather is; that’s precisely why it’s fascinated with this iconography. This objectifying beefcake spectacle is especially weird because it’s shot through multiple lenses: a female director looking at men through the homosexual male gaze.

Handsomely geeky Harry Melling ably handles his duties of playing a closeted homosexual in a rewarding but familiar way, but much of the praise for Please Baby Please comes for Andrea Riseborough, whose over-the-top vamping wins over even the film’s detractors. Her acting choices all seem to be formed by asking the question, “how would Nic Cage play this scene if he were a housewife caught in a sexless marriage?” She gyrates in a corset, howls at the moon, breaks into a spontaneous Bert Lahr impersonation, and acts crazier and crazier (and more and more like a man) as the movie progresses. This risky material could sag limply if not aroused by hyperbole, so it’s hard to imagine the movie succeeding without Riseborough’s committed insanity setting the tone.

‘s cameo was much-hyped, but underwhelming; the most significant thing is the vote of confidence she casts by lending her name to this esoteric project. We did notice an old friend showing up as co-writer: . Please Baby Please is currently in a limited run exclusively in theaters; we’ll update you when it becomes more widely available.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…the film’s over-the-top approach and awkward pacing prevent this defiantly bizarre concoction from resonating deeper than its surface fascination. “–Toff Jorgensen, Cinemalogue (contemporaneous)