A$ap Rocky’s latest music video was shot in Kyiv and includes about one surreal gag per minute, incorporating cappuccino toilets, puddle dolphins, and one-toe feet.
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Tag Archives: Surrealism
CAPSULE: WAITING FOR DALI (2023)
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DIRECTED BY: David Pujol
FEATURING: Ivan Massagué, José Garcia, Clara Ponsot
PLOT: A restaurateur in Salvador Dalí ‘s hometown of Cadaqués in the 70s dreams of luring the artist to visit his Dalí -themed “El Surreal” bistro, and catches a break when a master chef on the lam shows up in need of work (and a cover story).
COMMENTS: Movie about Dalí (at least the ones we’ve covered) all seem to be rooted in realism: Little Ashes focused on Federico García Lorca’s crush on the young Dalí, while Mary Harron‘s Daliland largely contended itself with depicting the extravagance of the painter’s lavish celebrity lifestyle. Perhaps Dalí himself would appreciate the irony; no director dares attempt to even approximate his hallucinatory genius. (We suspect surrealist Quentin Dupieux will end this trend soon when he releases his “real fake biopic” starring multiple actors as Dalí later this year.) When Jules decorates his El Surreal bistro with plastic clocks melting in the trees, a lobster glued to the telephone, and mannequins seated at the tables, it seems like a cheesy Vegas-style tribute to the surrealist icon rather than anything legitimately surreal.
The surrealist cuisine crafted by master chef Fernando, however, does show originality: an airy mountain of carrot mouse modeled off a local landmark, “hot-and-cold pea soup,” various oddly shaped mini-loafs painstakingly decorated with tiny springs of herbs, and an array savory lollipops served on a bed of mud. The artistic journey in the film belongs to Fernando, who learns to incorporate controlled chaos into his craft, which had previously been ruled by strict order and proper French culinary procedures. Fernando’s gastronomical reinventions suggest the way Dalí mastered the basic techniques of painting before warping them to his own imaginary landscapes. Restaurateur Jules (who looks uncannily like a young Spanish Robert Downey Jr.), on the other hand, essentially serves as dapper comic relief: he is a Dalí fanboy who invents with multiple unsuccessful schemes to lure the object of his obsession to his dining establishment. In the end, it is only Fernando’s audacious menu that offers any chance of attracting the master.
Dalí himself is only an aspirational figure in the tale; if you are waiting for him to appear, you may be disappointed. You will also not learn a lot about the artist; the film, made for a Spanish audience, assumes you have a baseline of knowledge about the time, place, and players. A single introductory sentence explains that the story takes place at the end of the Franco dictatorship, and from there you’re on your own. The film expects you to know who Gala is when she appears, and to recognize the various Dalían tributes Jules has set up in El Surreal. Franco’s police play a role in motivating the plot, but they are hardly a serious threat; they are almost comic foils, and not even important enough to bother tying up the loose threads they leave at the end. The film is instead surprisingly light and frothy, like carrot mousse, and sunny like the Catalonian shore, a celebration of creativity that shines even in the darkest days.
Director David Pujol’s had directed two previous documentaries about Dalí, and also a television miniseries documentary about avant-garde chef Ferran Adrià, so he obviously knows his subjects well.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
SATURDAY SHORT: AU COEUR SU SON (2024)
A student goes on a psychedelic journey that includes shaking hands with a floating half-skeleton as he daydreams during a lecture. Music by Rémi Fox, and the voice of Jean-Luc Godard makes a cameo appearance.
THE LATTER YEARS OF COFFIN JOE
In 1964, the black-clad figure who would soon become Zé do Caixão (“Coffin Joe”) appeared in a nightmare to a struggling Brazilian filmmaker named José Mojica Marins, and quickly tumbled his way onscreen as the magnetic pole of At Midnight I’ll Take Your Soul. As portrayed by Marins, Joe burst onscreen as an instantly iconic horror presence: snazzily dressed all in black with a top hat and a demonic monobrow, and, most notably, talon-like fingernails the size of paring knives.
Joe’s first two classic appearances (Soul and its 1967 sequel, This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse) quickly established the rules for the character beyond his iconic look. Coffin Joe, a mortician by trade, is wildly sadistic, favoring elaborate tortures that often utilize tarantulas and snakes. Joe is megalamoniacal, constantly asserting his personal superiority over the common rabble of peasantry. Joe is militantly atheistic (a shocking in the deeply Catholic Brazil of the 60s—Joe not only loudly denies the existence of God, but even eats lamb on Good Friday!) Joe is obsessed with securing the immortality of his bloodline, constantly searching for a woman brave and depraved enough to be worthy of bearing him a son. And, curiously, while Joe has no supernatural powers of his own—he triumphs over his enemies, whether musclemen or an entire posse of townsfolk, by cunning, bravado, and sheer force of will—he is always beset by occult forces: curses from his victims, visions of ghosts, and, in Corpse, a memorable trip to Hell itself (which Joe refuses to believe in, despite his ten-minute firsthand technicolor torture tour.)
Although they have their rough patches—Joe can get long-winded when discussing either his own superiority or his lust for a child—the first two films are horror classics. Zé do Caixão became a sensation in Brazil, a horror mainstay with the look of a Freddy Kruger and the cultural reach of a Dracula. Marins launched a series of comic books, TV guest spots (most now lost), and personal appearances in character. Strangely, Marins would not directly continue the Coffin Joe saga for forty years after Corpse; but the character would reappear in various guises, most of which are covered in Arrow’s box set, “Inside the Mind of Coffin Joe.”
Although he does not appear in any of the three stories that comprise The Strange World of Coffin Joe (1968), Joe lends his name to the film and introduces it (“You can’t accept the terror because you are the terror!” Joe proclaims as a lightning storm rages). Zé do Caixão even has his own theme song here, an a capella folk hymn (“it’s strange, it’s very strange, Coffin Joe’s world,” moans the lead singer over the credits, as the camera focuses up the miniskirt of a gyrating go-go dancer.) The three stories here are fairly standard horror tales, like Continue reading THE LATTER YEARS OF COFFIN JOE
FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ANIMALIA PARADOXA (2024)
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DIRECTED BY: Niles Atallah
FEATURING: Andrea Gomez
PLOT: In a world of little water and plenty of debris, a creature wishes to find refuge in the sea.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: For a couple of reasons, Atallah’s film brings to mind Begotten; for other reasons, it brings to mind Hotel Poseidon. For these reasons, Animalia Paradoxa is easy to describe as “weird.”
COMMENTS: There were a number of walkouts, there was an immediate rush by others when the credits clicked onto the screen, and a pair of young women sitting behind me were disappointed at the paucity of stop-motion animation. Their criticism was somewhat sound, as there is little of that element in the film; however, it is a credit to them that they remained to witness the entirety of Animalia Paradoxa as it languidly built its world and approached its bizarre climax and whisperingly uplifting denouement.
The experience begins with a shabby red curtain, drawn back by a marionette hand, revealing a reel-to-reel film viewer behind the crimson barrier. The hand cranks a lever and documentary footage of oceans, life, destruction, and more unspools, and eventually we meet our unnamed, and understandably mute, protagonist. She is covered head to foot in shabby, skin-tight habiliment, with only her milky eyes visible. Her exploration of the near-empty shell of a building in a wasteland is both skulking and lithe, implying she is not native to this terrain. There are occasional silent onlookers, and intermittently a group of cultists pass through the courtyard, spouting messianic fervor and hate.
Andrea Gomez, who performs the main character, captures its gentle soul through movement. She artfully and desperately crafts tchotchkes to offer up to a hand which emerges from a crack in a wall. She needs water for comfort, perhaps to live, and the gummi worms proffered by this hand, when fed to a mutterer suspended in a web of her own hair, releases water down her matted locks. The xylophonic sound cues and other chime and thump-based music underscores the unreality of this mythic exercise. Dialogue, though little is to be found, always grates, whether it be the megaphone-distorted tirades from the patrolling zealots, or the sinister coughs and utterances from a bloated basement-dwelling creature whose face is obscured by a suspended cellophane sheet done up in makeup.
This film oozes over you, which by and large is a satisfying, if not always pleasant, experience. The trash world Atallah assembles (alongside the collective Diluvio, which also includes the pair Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal Leon) is ugly and beautiful—and I hate phrases like that. The title, were I to guess, refers to us. Humans. Dry-land entities, yearning for water. But shortly after the screening, I decided not to think too much on this film. Its themes are clear, even as its execution is obtuse. The cryptic dream of Animalia Paradoxa is better handled indirectly, lest the clumsy fingers of reason shatter its eerie presence.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY: