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"A demon whose delight is in death and wretchedness" has to come from somewhere, thus a slumber party massacre for English Romantic neurotics. Lake Geneva villa, one long summer night in 1816, "an age of dreams and nightmares." Lord Byron (Gabriel Byrne) plays sardonic host, Doctor Polidori (Timothy Spall) quivers by his side. Guests arrive by boat and promptly scamper up and down the manor, Percy Shelley (Julian Sands) and his bride Mary (Natasha Richardson) and her stepsister Claire Clairmont (Myriam Cyr). "Party games?" "Is fear a game?" Hide and seek, séances, hallucinations, everything and more to cleave open the poetic mind for the shape of dread within. The artist's phantasmagoria, cf. Bergman's Hour of the Wolf, a gleeful send-up by Ken Russell. Fugitives "from fact and fantasy," negotiating with overpowering imaginations and overworking libidos. For one the ambulatory suit of armor carries leeches inside, for another it packs a metallic erection, still others prefer a bit of self-made stigmata. The Fuseli imp steps out of the canvas above the fireplace, Redon eyeballs blink as nipples on a maiden's bosom. "To think that in England, I was woken by larks. Here it is the song of the lesser spotted nubile." Inspiration from above is a tree struck by lightning, the mud and rodents in the basement are not to be ignored. Steampunk odalisques point up La Règle du jeu, "madder than given credit for," Thomas Dolby's synthesizers augment the cheerfully off-putting spectacle. "One minute, terror, and the next, love." "Terror has an irresistible beauty." Frankenstein is the gleam at dawn, the tourist ship floats by centuries later on an ocean of amniotic fluid. With Alec Mango, Andreas Wisniewski, Pascal King, and Dexter Fletcher.
--- Fernando F. Croce |