the red duchess

'Loser' is Amy Heckerling's 'Candide', in which a naive optimist is sent out into the world, only to discover that it is unjust, exploitative and brutal. The best thing about 'Loser' is its casting and the expectations it creates: where 'American pie' was a sweet romantic comedy disguised as a scatalogical exposure of man's basest instincts, 'Loser' is a scatalogical exposure of man's basest instincts disguised as a sweet romantic comedy. The ironic references to Mena Suvari's most iconic role - 'American Beauty' - expose the paedophilia driving that work's sentimentality. This is a film of unimpeachable integrity, as ugly and unpleasant as the characters it satirises, 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' in Hell. So much integrity, in fact, it's virtually unwatchable.

There are some people who try to reclaim 'Nadja' - along with Abel Ferrera's 'The Addiction' the most stultifyingly pretentious film ever made, bludgeoning the audience with Wim Wenders-like globs of pseudo-philosophical gabble and supposedly 'arty' screes of visual incoherence - by suggesting it is comic. But laughing at what, exactly? Horror films? You have to know what horror films do before you can mock them, and director Almedeyra hasn't a clue. American indie films? Probably, but it replicates that mind-numbing mindset so faithfully, it forgets to be funny about it. Students, whose existential angst and elevated notions of 'beauty' find expression in My Bloody Valentine records? Definitely. Elena Lowenstein as Dracula's Daughter (and Breton's Nadja?) is so gorgeous in her designer Grim Reaper cape, she may even replace Death from 'The Seventh Seal' as my iconic nightmare of choice.