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Blue tablecloth, white plates, red candles laid out for a curtailed meal, a bit of Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie to prepare the marathon gloss on El Ángel Exterminador. Maison du jouir, not Gauguin's but Stephen Dwoskin's, the proper laboratory for his experiment in the vagaries of coexistence. Bohemians in confined spaces, a free-form group-grope for days. "Once upon a time, there were three little pigs..." Glitter of fables, tangle of limbs, blur of lingerie. A game bunch, odalisques and clowns and marionettes flow from the costume box. A sense of unease quickly creeps into the pansexual gyrations—as orgies go, this insular pleasure dome is all foreplay and hangover. The junction of euphoria and discomfort is Dwoskin's sweet spot, his aim is Rimbaud's "long, immense et raisonné dérèglement de tous les sens." Participants pair up and break off, smudge the lines between caress and blow, continuously reinvent themselves in private spotlights. Masks, wigs, makeup, slow-motion freakouts before perpetually drawn curtains. Bacchanals can be wearisome events, sometimes you just want to have a cup of coffee and somebody insists on licking your toes. "I'm happier when I'm with other people than when I'm by myself ... I mean, I would quite like to be a samurai, maybe ... Daydream and fantasize." Words in the realm of fondling and glancing exist to be drowned out as Gavin Bryars' dense soundscape alternates between demented mechanical piano and ululating hornet nest. (It is no accident that the only intelligible bits are a distended fairytale and a fumbled song.) Desire on a string, colors of the vortex. It builds to the close-up favored by Dreyer or Warhol, the human face painted and naked. "How should I your true love know / From another one?" Noé corrupts this most spectacularly in Climax.
--- Fernando F. Croce |