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Capsules, It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue

IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: HELTER SKELTER (2012)

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DIRECTED BY: Mika Ninagawa

FEATURING: Erika Sawajiri, , , Kiko Mizuhara, Nao Ômori

PLOT:  The struggle to keep up appearances and growing pressure from younger models pushes supermodel Lilico’s physical and mental well-being to the breaking point.

Still from Helter Skelter (2012)

COMMENTS: A helter skelter is a slide. A lighthouse-shaped structure that you climb up through the inside to then slide down on a curving ramp nailed to the outside. The Beatles’ song of the same name gives it away in its opening lyric: “When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide.” Regardless of what Charles Manson thought it meant, it’s supposed to be about something that’s fun for a brief moment, but it’s also a reminder that everything that goes up must eventually come back down, and sometimes right quickly at that.

If the higher you go means the faster you fall, then Lilico is about to come crashing down at light speed. She is living her peak life: impossibly beautiful, her face graces countless magazine covers and advertisements. She’s about to branch out into film acting, and every girl in Japan knows her by name. So when she spots a sizeable flaw in her perfect skin, it’s a literal crack in her facade, the augur of an explosive downfall. Helter Skelter is all about that implosion, the slow-motion train wreck of her discovery that perfect beauty has always had an expiration date, and that page on the calendar has finally turned.

It’s hard to work up a lot of pity for someone who is rich, famous, and ridiculously attractive, but Helter Skelter does a solid job in showing how Lilico’s life of luxury is not especially enjoyable. She is monstrous but also desperate, and how her misery expresses itself is the primary source of Helter Skelter’s weirdness. She takes out her rage on her doggedly loyal assistant Hana through sexual abuse and humiliation, and starts to have out-of-control hallucinations at inconvenient moments. The fact that she is being tracked by a pair of detectives who resemble the cast of a Japanese reboot of “The X-Files” is appropriate, because Lilico herself is otherworldly. These moments of panic and cruelty are so outlandish, so extreme, that the biggest surprise is that we are expected to view them realistically. Perhaps tales like The Substance have trained us to expect a supernatural element, but Helter Skelter offers no twist. The film straightforwardly insists that Lilico’s beauty has a scientific (if illegal and amoral) explanation, and that her behavior is all her own. The arrival of her very own Eve Harrington, the naturally stunning Kozue, who achieves success despite expressing apathy toward the  fashion business, reinforces that point. Kozue doesn’t expect to be beautiful forever, and while she knows some regurgitation goes with the job, she plans to give it up someday. By contrast, considering everything Lilico has done to secure her position, her fear of decline and the collapse of her enhanced body utterly short-circuit her.

Japanese culture is both fascinated and repelled by celebrity, and Helter Skelter enlists exactly the right people to delve into its darker side. Director Ninagawa was a fashion photographer herself, and she films with the barely controlled energy of a wild photo shoot. Sawajiri also knows the world, having been a successful model before turning to acting. (She gained notoriety for a press conference where she was viewed as disrespectful to reporters and her castmates alike, so audiences in Japan would experience art imitating life in Lilico’s ultimate, disastrous encounter with the media.) Their bona fides are beyond reproach, and there’s no question that the team produces a motion picture with a unique sensibility, bringing their personal experience to the story. The thing is, while Helter Skelter is a beautifully crafted film, a certain sameness creeps in as the story seems to be building toward something cataclysmic, but never quite gets there. Lilico’s fate is inevitable—it is painfully obvious that she is going to crash—but given the many omens of doom and the explosive nature of Ninagawa’s camera and Sawajiri’s volcanic performance, the impact ultimately feels blunted. Lilico’s fate can’t quite live up to the drama of what precedes it.

Helter Skelter is based on a popular manga by Kyoko Okazaki, and it feels like it. It jumps storylines and techniques like a page turning, and the bold and vibrant colors and off-kilter angles feel like they could have jumped straight out of the pages of a comic book. The film’s most striking image, when Lilico faces a room full of popping camera flashes, has the veneer of illustration. But like fashion itself, the movie is successful at delivering style and attitude but quickly moves on to the next new thing without imparting a message beyond the surface. It’s a fun, fast ride, but it’s just a ride. Then I get to the bottom and I see you again.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a feverish character study about fame, vanity, and the terrifying fragility of manufactured perfection… The visuals never settle into a comfortable place. Scenes are filled with exaggerated color palettes and surreal staging, making the environment feel beautiful and suffocating. It’s a world built entirely around image, and Ninagawa constantly reminds the audience how artificial that image really is.” – Chris Jones, Overly Honest Reviews

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

Helter Skelter

Helter Skelter

  • This lurid body horror, based on a manga by Kyoko Okazaki and directed by Mika Ninagawa (Sakuran), is a candy-colored nightmare!

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Apocryphally Weird

55*. IN FABRIC (2018)

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“The idea came from shopping really, specifically at second hand stores. You’re immediately aware of death. There is a haunting there; you can find stains on clothing, sometimes you can smell the areas of outfits. It’s a weird thing because you’ll never really know what that person looked like. It activates the imagination and it lent into things I wanted to explore through these visceral reactions whether it be body dysmorphia or fetishism.”–Peter Strickland

“Nothing attracts attention like a little red dress.”–Laura Bush

DIRECTED BY: Peter Strickland

FEATURING: Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Fatma Mohamed, Leo Bill, Hayley Squires, Julian Barratt, Steve Oram, Richard Bremmer, Jaygann Ayeh, Gwendoline Christie

Still from In fabric (2018)

PLOT: Sheila, a divorced bank teller, gets ready for her first newly single dating experience by visiting the local department store and splurging on a red dress; a series of unusual, life-threatening occurrences ensue, all seemingly related to the dress. While attempting to return the outfit to the store, she learns that the model who wore the dress for a promotional catalogue was later killed in a traffic accident. Later, the frock finds its way to meek appliance repairman Reg and then his assertive fiancée Babs, both of whom have strange encounters with a mysterious sales clerk and a pair of inappropriately nosy bank managers.

BACKGROUND:

  • In Fabric was Strickland’s fourth narrative feature. We have previously reviewed two of those, The Duke of Burgundy and Berberian Sound Studio, as well as the follow-up, Flux Gourmet. Mohamed has appeared in all of his movies.
  • An early draft of the script featured six people receiving the fateful dress and facing the consequences. Strickland realized this would require a six-hour film to give each character their due. In order to secure studio support, he trimmed the screenplay accordingly.
  • The setting of Thames-Valley-upon-Thames is modeled after Strickland’s hometown of Reading. The fictional Dentley and Soper’s department store was inspired by Jacksons, a Reading retail mainstay for more than 130 years until it closed in 2013.
  • Winner of the 2019 Méliès d’Or, awarded for outstanding achievement in European science fiction, fantasy, and horror films.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Strickland successfully dodges the silliness factor associated with trying to showcase a demon-possessed piece of clothing. As it flutters in the rafters, creeps under doors, and swirls about in erotic delight, the dress reads as dramatic rather than laughable. But when it comes to outrageousness, the garment takes a back seat to the craziness going on at the store that sold it. After the doors close for the evening, the saleswomen begin the delicate process of bringing the mannequins to the back of the house, removing the clothes, and gently bathing the dummies with sponges and tongues. The intensity ramps up as the fake human is revealed to have a very realistic pubic mound, and eventually it begins to menstruate. It’s a sight that moves the proprietor to indulge in full self-gratification. One does wonder what goes on in the store’s sporting goods department.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: Prepping the mannequin; the erotic power of washing machine maintenance

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: We are always up for a movie about a homicidal haunted object. A haunted house, a haunted bed, even a haunted tire have all earned a spot in our august halls. (Haunted bulldozers and motorcycles, not so much.) So a haunted dress is totally welcome to join the party, but it has to bring something extra. In Fabric delivers two such elements. One is the bizarrely creepy department store that is a portal to hell, watching over its customers with an attitude that is both patronizing and carnivorous. The other is an earnest sympathy toward its characters, neither of whom have class  privilege or easy socialization, and who turn to retail to give them a lift. In Fabric knows that these are decent folks looking for a break, and turns their exploitation by retail and advertising into a horror show.

Original trailer for In Fabric

COMMENTS: Sheila could use a win. Her ex-husband has taken up Continue reading 55*. IN FABRIC (2018) →

Canonically Weird (The List)

346. LIQUID SKY (1982)

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” I’ll tell you something, too, that’s starting to annoy me about UFOs: the fact that they cross galaxies or universes to visit us, and always end up in places like … Alabama. Maybe these aren’t super-intelligent beings, you know what I mean? ‘Don’t you wanna go to New York or LA?’ ‘Nah, we just had a long trip, we’re gonna kick back and whittle some.'”–Bill Hicks

Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Anne Carlisle, Otto von Wernherr, Paula E. Sheppard, Susan Doukas, Bob Brady

PLOT: A tiny alien flying saucer lands on top of the Empire State Building, directly across from the penthouse where drug-scarfing New Wave fashion model Margaret spends her nights bedding partners of both sexes. A German UFO scientist who has tracked this manifestation takes up residence in an apartment across from Margaret, spying on her through a telescope. Margaret’s sex partners begin to die off as the aliens harvest the endorphins released during their orgasms.

Still from Liquid Sky (1982)

BACKGROUND:

  • Slava Tsukerman was a Russian Jew who trained as an engineer before switching to filmmaking. He made a mostly documentaries in the Soviet Union and Israel before emigrating to the U.S. to make features. He began developing Liquid Sky after funding for a sci-fi film that would have starred and fell through.
  • Co-writer Anne Carlisle, who starts as a fashion model in the film, was a fashion model in real life. Most of the actors were art-scene punks drawn from bohemian casting director Bob Brady’s acting classes, and most played some version of themselves.
  • Many repeat the claim that Liquid Sky was chosen as the title of the film because it was slang for heroin, but according to Tsukerman he encountered the term as a metaphor for euphoria in his research, and junkies only began to refer to the drug as “liquid sky” after the movie became a cult hit.
  • Made with an estimated budget of half a million dollars, Liquid Sky grossed more than $1.7 million in 1983.
  • In a 2014 interview Tsukerman announced his intentions to make Liquid Sky 2, but no news has emerged on that front since.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: New Wave fashion shows? Neon sculptures? Flying saucers hovering in front of the Empire State Building? Margaret’s fluorescent face paint under a blacklight? All excellent choices. But we had to go with alien-eye-vision, rendered through technology that looks like a cross between malfunctioning army ranger night-vision goggles and News at 11’s stormtracker radarscope, but with a Day-Glo color scheme, and often looking like it’s peering through a microscope aimed at a dividing zygote.

THREE WEIRD THINGS: UFO/heroin connection; spontaneous hateful beat eulogy; prayer to the Empire State Building

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Liquid Sky is like an alien’s attempt at making a film set in the No-Wave Greenwich Village art scene in 1982, if their only previous exposure to movies was the works of , , and Rinse Dream. Neon, nasty, and occasionally tedious, but there’s nothing else quite like it.


Original trailer for Liquid Sky

COMMENTS: Liquid Sky is about aliens, and it might as well have Continue reading 346. LIQUID SKY (1982) →

List Candidates

LIST CANDIDATE: THE NEON DEMON (2016)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: , , Bella Heathcote, ,

PLOT: A 16-year old girl travels to Los Angeles to become a model; her rare beauty makes her an immediate hit, but not everyone in town wishes her success.

Still from The Neon Demon (2016)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE LIST: Since I’m incredibly jaded when it comes to cinematic strangeness, when I get the rare opportunity to watch a weird movie in a theater, I like to pay attention to the reactions of the other theatergoers to try to assess the film’s baseline level of audience alienation. At the well-attended late night screening where I saw The Neon Demon, at two separate points the young man sitting directly behind me let out a distressed “WTF are we watching?” My own viewing companion (a film fanatic with mainstream tastes) complained Demon was both “too arty” and “too trippy.” On the other hand, there were no confirmed walkouts—although one woman did step out briefly when a certain grossout scene commenced, only to return when it was over. The lack of mass departures was discouraging, but the audience’s stunned reactions were generally strong enough to convince me that Refn’s onto something genuinely weird here.

COMMENTS: Stylishly unreal and bluntly provocative, lit by neon and covered in glitter, The Neon Demon may be the most beautiful and least meaningful art film of 2016. It begins with radiant waif Jesse (Fanning) posing for necrophilia-themed glam shots, and progresses through an expressionist Illuminati pyramid catwalk triumph and gratuitous grossout scenes (which I won’t spoil, except to say that multiple taboos are tweaked, sometimes in the same scene) to a bloody climax. The film is washed in Natasha Braier’s unreal lighting schemes, a la Suspiria—or even more on point, a la a bigger-budgeted Beyond the Black Rainbow—and the characters are clothed in Erin Brenach’s bizarrely conceived metallic/pastel costumes, with the entirety choreographed to a chilly, abstract electronic score by Cliff Martinez. Sensually, Demon is a pulsating, glittering delight, although anyone looking for intellectual sustenance will find little nourishment here (the film’s unsubtle message is “L.A. feeds on the beautiful,” hardly a novel insight). The whole experience is like attending a rave held at Hollywood’s most fashionably nihilist discotheque.

The roles are underwritten—or, more charitably, archetypal. Fanning does well enough as the wunderkind of pulchritude, a luckless gal who knows she has one asset in life and is determined to use it. Jena Malone is more impressive as a make-up artist who takes it upon herself to play big sis to the industry comer, while Heathcote and Lee portray a pair of catty anorexic working models, on the wrong side of 21 and eaten up with envy at Jesse’s success. The marginal male characters are just as obvious—a couple of domineering, vaguely threatening fashion impresarios, and aspiring boyfriend and photographer Dean, who, upon learning Jesse is only 16, hesitates ever so slightly before leaning in for a good night kiss. Of the masculine predators, the standout is easily Keanu, playing against type as a low-rent sleazeball operating a motel catering to runaways. Given the character’s utter depravity, the role was brave and unexpected for a waning matinee idol. After 2006’s A Scanner Darkly and now this dark cameo, I will declare that Reeves’s penance for his masterpiece-wrecking Jonathan Harker is officially complete.

Fashion isn’t art, it’s design, so can—or should—a movie about the fashion scene be artful? Individual shots from The Neon Demon are pure genius—yet, there’s not much that ties the film together conceptually, other than its obvious cautions about the high-stakes world of professional superficiality. A fashion maven rightfully scoffs at the notion that Dean (who claims, without much visible evidence, that Jesse has unseen depths) would be interested in the model if she wasn’t singularly gorgeous. Just like it’s subjects, The Neon Demon is shallow and beautiful. And though beauty isn’t everything, it actually counts for a lot.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Pretentious and self-indulgent, it seems tailor-made to appeal to lovers of the obtuse and inscrutable until it takes a left-turn into schlocky, gore-drenched splatter imagery.”–James Berardinelli, Reel Views (contemporaneous)