Tag Archives: Experimental

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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: VASE DE NOCES (1974)

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AKA Wedding Trough; The Pig F*cking Movie

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DIRECTED BY:Thierry Zéno

FEATURING: Dominique Garny

PLOT: A young farmer embraces his animalistic side as he romances a sow.

Still from Vase de Noces (1974)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Vase de Noces is an under-appreciated classic of surrealist cinema. Not only it is full of extremities but it remains enigmatic, inviting us to ponder on  possible interpretations.

COMMENTS: The opening shot, somewhere in between the lyrical and the grotesque, the poetic and the nonsensical, sets the tone accordingly. Our protagonist attempts to dress two pigeons with doll heads, in the first of a series of segments where animals fall prey to his whims. The monstrosity he strives to create recalls a pair of malformed angels, and his perverted, personal view of the angelic. And this layered and disturbing—if purely symbolic—act is just the beginning of our tale.

The film is simple from a narrative standpoint. We follow our protagonist, a young peasant, in a series of extreme and illogical acts. He seems at times a pure, innocent, childlike soul, flying his kite without a care in the world and praying before lunch like a proper Christian. He is also capable of the grossest barbarities, like the infamous act of bestiality mentioned whenever this movie is discussed.

What exactly his nature? Is he a real yet disturbed person, a simpleton, and  the film a realistic character study? Or is he purely symbolic, an allegorical personification of the wildest impulses of the human psyche: the id, the beast lurking inside each and every one of us? Probably the latter. Our protagonist is a being of pure emotion, full of contradicting desires, yet always eager to embrace his bestial side.

He seems to find some sort of happiness through bestiality—at first. The female pig gets pregnant and gives birth to three beautiful piglets. It’s almost wholesome. Yet the young man is still unable to find comfort. Unable to help himself, he wreaks havoc through a series of repugnant acts, culminating in a tragic finale. Fully embracing your wild impulses can only bring destruction and self-annihilation, our tale seems to say.

Vase De Noces was Zéno’s feature debut, his second movie after a short documentary portraying schizophrenic artist Georges Moinet. His main interests here are not dissimilar. Zéno once again studies humanity apart from its logical “civilized” aspects, depicting people as amalgamations of impulses, emotions, depravity, and nothing more.

That’s why words—a product of reason—are completely absent from our tale. Instead, we have a rich soundscape full of playful tunes imitating animals’ voices or natural sounds, with classical melodies adding a hint of lyricism. There are also piercing and alarming noises at the most intense moments. The soundscape perfectly aligns with the film’s hypnotic black and white photography.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…this Belgian-lensed art-dirge is one of the most foul and pretentious pics ever made. It’s so damned bizarre that simply detailing the plot can’t even come close to conveying the unique combination of utter disgust and absolute boredom you register while viewing it.” – Steven Puchalski, Shock Cinema

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MATAPANKI (2026)

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DIRECTED BY: Diego Fuentes

FEATURING: Ramon Galvez, Antonia McCarthy, Rosa Peñaloza, Diego Bravo, Rodrigo Lisboa

PLOT: Punk kid Ricardo unlocks superpowers from a mysterious alcoholic admixture and reluctantly pursues the path of a superhero.

Still from Matapanki (2026)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: The punk DIY aesthetic goes quite a ways in making this one a bit different—but the apocalyptic, kaiju-scale showdown with the US prez takes it over the finish line.

COMMENTS: Punks and their punk movies. Jerky camera maneuvering, hand-painted ¡Poder! effects, naturalistic acting, boozing, cigarette-lighter huffing, amiable grandmothers… Wait, where was I? Oh yeah, and they can’t even afford to film in color!

Of course, I jest. (And I’m something of a square.) To be honest, this film is quite charming. Ricardo and his pals have a healthy social thing going: the cover charge at the club they frequent can be paid through second-hand books. All they’re trying to do is live their low-key party lives on their own terms. But as is always the case, the Man (in particular, the Gringo) wants to bring ’em down.

With an opener straight out of ‘s dark alchemy, Matapanki‘s punk cred is never in question, despite the feel-good throughline. The superhero storyline unspools in thrash time, taking somewhere under an hour (if you don’t include the credits). Viewers get a wallop of antiestablishmentarianism, with fast cuts and vibrant doodles whenever our hero (and later, the supervillain) pumps up the ¡Poder! Matapanki jouncily stumbles toward the finish line, keeping merely oddball throughout (with more than a few hints of Repo Man) until culminating with a BANG! when Super Punk Boy battles Super Neocon Gringo Man.

Take that, you square! And don’t you ever mess with our anarcho-drunken heroes again.

Matapanki does have a worldwide distribution deal with Italy’s Minerva Pictures, so it should become available to the general public in the nearish future.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a perfect rendition of a superhero flick made in the style of the cinema of transgression… Like a good punk song, it stuffs a lot of chaos into a very short running time…”–Micheal Talbot-Haynes, Film Threat (festival review)

Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: CAN DIALECTICS BREAK BRICKS? (1973)

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La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques?

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DIRECTED BY: René Viénet

FEATURING: Hung- Liu Chan, Ingrid Yin-Yin Hu, Jason Piao Pai

PLOT: Alienated proletarians, trained in kung fu, fight against their bureaucratic oppressors.

Poster for "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?" (1973)

COMMENTS: What if a typical kung fu flick was transformed through voiceover into a subversive and radical wanna-be manifesto? Such an anarchic romp could only come from France. But let’s take things from the beginning.

Some definitions should be clarified. Dialectics is a product of the Situationist movement, a group of anti-capitalist artists and thinkers, known cinematically mostly through Guy Debord’s documentaries. Like a lot of spoofs—What’s Up Tiger Lily? (1966) and In Search of the Ultra-Sex (2016) come to mind—this movie takes preexisting material and subverts its meaning through clever use of voiceovers.  The Situationists call the exact technique used here “détournement”, and it could be better defined as a reappropriation in a new and ideologically subversive setting. It is a recontextualization of images so that new meanings, radically different than previous, are produced: a practice commonly used in  postmodernist art of the later half of the twentieth century until our own time.

With the theoretical background of this movie specified, what is it really about? The plot revolves around a commune of proletarian martial artists defending themselves against alienation and their evil overlords. These overlords are not simply your typical evil Western capitalists, but we can trace references to the Soviet Union’s nomenklatura as well. They in fact represent of every possible state, even of those that hypocritically claim to defend the rights of the proletariat.

A main character emerges from the crowd, a typical hero who becomes the focus of the narrative, a man who sets his noble ideals against the bad guys. What is atypical of the genre , though, is that while the choreography of fighting plays out, our characters indulge in deep conversations about class struggle, the abolition of masters, and Wilhem Reich‘s writing, among other subjects. Through voice-over an “essential”  bibliography is mentioned, too, which one of the most unexpected and weirdest elements of the movie.

Don’t worry, though. This is not a heavy movie. Sexual jokes and self-aware irony prove its unwillingness to take itself too seriously. In fact, Dialectics isn’t much more than a funny gimmick. It surely has an appeal for fans of cult cinema, but it is not essential viewing for anyone interested in the Situationist movement. On the other hand, if you enjoy this kind of absurd humor—and the eccentric idea of a martial arts show about the class struggle—and would like to view something similar, albeit in a contemporary setting, try to find the French TV show “Machine” (2024) created by Thomas Bidegain and Fred Grivois.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“An obnoxious and hilarious stunt from 1973…”–Eve Tushnet, Patheos (streaming)

(This movie was suggested for review by Comrade Faustroll, who said “The filmmakers strike the right balance of meaning what they’re saying enough to be really weird, but joking enough to keep it interesting.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)

Capsules

CAPSULE: TRAUMNOVELLE (2024)

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AKA Dream Story

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You are not wrong, who deem

That my days have been a dream. . .

– Edgar Allan Poe

DIRECTED BY: Florian Frerichs

FEATURING: Nikolai Kinski, Laurine Price, Nora Islei

PLOT: Disturbed by his wife’s fantasies of infidelity, a physician crashes a secret orgy.

Still from Traumnovelle (2024)

COMMENTS: “Wanna go. . . someplace else?”

Although not a Surrealist, Arthur Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle tells the tale of a married man who, for twenty-hours, basically lives his life according to what André Breton, the founder of Surrealism, called “objective chance.”1 After arguing with his wife and losing a patient, Jakob (Kinski) wanders aimlessly around Berlin, ping-ponging from one chance encounter to another, searching for that elusive else, while preoccupied with thoughts of death and sex.

So, if Schnitzler’s story can be interpreted as a Surrealist tale, then what do we expect to see when it becomes a film? Is a Surrealist story necessarily a weird movie? Does it have to contain the cinematic equivalent of melting clocks, or can it treat dream reality in more varied and subtle ways?

Traumnovelle contains only one melting reality scene: when the wife, Amelia, describes her dream to her husband and an animated sequence takes over the narrative. The morphing visuals depict the couple in a variety of landscapes according to constantly shifting art styles. The rest of the film depicts a Berlin filtered through Jakob’s daydreams and imagination. Nothing in the live-action sequences is impossible in reality, but a build-up of eerie coincidences and uncanny repetitions create the slightly sinister atmosphere of a nightmare.

Viewers familiar with ‘s Eyes Wide Shut (1999), also based on Schnitzler’s story, will recognize the major plot points. During an evening at a nightclub, where Amelia dances with a masked man, a pair of women in domino masks tries to pick up Jakob. The question of escape, paired with the teasing offer to play with their VibrateApp, solicits only an echo from the stupefied Jakob: “Someplace else?”

Ultimately, he leaves the girls to their remote vibrator, rescues his wife from the masked man and takes her home. The couple have a heated discussion over whether or not they are both sexually attracted to other people. Amelia then thoroughly shocks Jakob by revealing she would have left him for a random officer, glimpsed in their hotel during their previous summer’s vacation.

To avoid her while he thinks this through, Jakob spends the night on the town. He’s awkwardly hit on by the daughter of his dead patient, follows a prostitute back to her room only to leave without enjoying her services, and eventually runs into a former classmate and medical school dropout, Nick Nightingale, now a shady nightclub performer.

During his strolls through the city, Jakob’s thoughts continually intrude into everyday life in genuinely startling moments. While listening to Verdi’s “A Masked Ball” he pictures himself as one of the Continue reading CAPSULE: TRAUMNOVELLE (2024) →

Capsules

CAPSULE: DRACULA (2025)

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DIRECTED BY: Radu Jude

FEATURING: Adonis Tanta, Oana Maria Zaharia, Gabriel Spahiu

PLOT: A film director narrates the tale of a washed- up actor playing Dracula, while AI- crafted sketches inspired by the vampire myth play as interludes.

Still from Dracula (2025)

COMMENTS: When a movie starts with shots of the historical Dracula—also known as Vlad the Impaler—clearly made by AI, you know you are in for a treat. Romanian director Radu Jude, one of the most uncompromising voices in European cinema today, proves once again his willingness to be weird and sarcastic. Dracula is a spiritual successor to some of his most controversial works, especially the infamous Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn (2021).

A film director narrates the tale of an actor performing Dracula through a structure somewhere in between sex-show and participatory theater. Jude intersperses a plethora of interludes among this story as the in-film director occasionally asks AI for inspiration and help in creating embedded narratives. This complex form of tales-within-tales recall everything from “The Arabian Nights” to ambitious cinematic projects like Mariano Llinás’ colossal La Flor (2018).

Dracula is a Frankenstein of a movie, a pastiche of vastly different genres and styles. There are adaptations of Romanian vampire tales, love stories set in different time periods, a hyper-stylized farce about a farmer harvesting cocks, a vulgar song, and ads inspired by Nosferatu (1922). Some sketches place Dracula in contemporary Romania to comment on the re-emergence of extreme right and nationalism, while another uses the vampire as an allegory for bloodsucking capitalism, in the vein of Julian Radlmaier’s Blutsauger (2021).  There is even a realistic slice-of-life episode towards the end.

Jude works here with a wide range of styles, from grim realism to surrealism. Some things remain constant, however. The acting is mostly over-the-top with rapid dialogues, as if we were watching a variety show. Jude applies Brechtian techniques, with fourth wall breaks reminding us of the artificiality of everything portrayed here. The theatrical props and AI shots further the theme. Dracula is Jude’s most ambitious work yet, a cinematic mammoth lasting almost three hours and an exemplary labyrinth of narrative complexity.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Jude combines A.I., dark humor, tongue-in-cheek humor and unhinged zaniness that creates a surreal experience that might be enjoyed more while drunk or high.”–Avi Offer, The NYC Movie Guru (contemporaneous)