Los conspiradores del placer

Slave/Master -- Sacher Masoch -- Sade, Marquis de -- SvankMajer. All S&M - purely by coincidence?

The liner notes and end credits of Conspirators of Pleasure list Max Ernst, Sacher Masoch, Marquis de Sade and Luis Buñuel as inspirations and or sources, planting Svankmajer's film firmly on the map of surrealist experimentation and with little doubt, denoting it as social and political commentary. Sexuality is employed to both present and represent socio-political disorders affected by the taut political tensions and trying social circumstances in everyday Eastern Europe.

Power relations between two tenants take the form of S&M, and repressed sexuality emerge in multifarious perverse ways in a city constantly spying on its citizens, where moments of privacy have to be enacted in strict interiors like closets and the imagination for fear of discovery and public shaming. Thrift stores where everyday items are salvaged turn out to be the sites providing raw materials for building and enacting sexual fantasies.

In Conspirators of Pleasure, sexual perversion and fetishes come across as symptomatic of a larger social and political neurosis. Yet, the end result of a film built on such an idea doesn't come across as staid, but superbly entertaining and wry, helped in no small part by the supremely brilliant realization by Svankmajer.

Conspirators of Pleasure is a winner and a must-watch.

Czech surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer is known for his bizarre stop motion films. In his full length films like "Alice" and "Faust", he takes his viewers to a subconscious world with real actors and stop motion creatures. "Conspirators of Pleasure" deals with the fantasies and fetishes of various everyday people. Each person at first seeming normal, spends almost the whole film trying to invent methods of fulfilling their bizarre fantasies. There is even some moments when characters become puppets. One man designs a head of a chicken suit and fantasizes about dropping a rock on his neighbor's head. The neighbor lady fantasizes about dominating her neighbor, turning him into a puppet and whipping him. Another example is a woman's fetish for bread. She rolls up balls of bread and sucks them up her nose through a straw. Of course there's a whole assortment of other depraved people with strange fantasies. Although the film is extremely bizarre, it is also very funny. Jan Svankmajer has created an intense atmosphere of strange desire, that may not be far from how some everyday people function. It's a funny film that explores the strange world of hidden fetishes.

I very much enjoyed Svankmajer's "Faust" so I was happy (and not ashamed) to pick this up from the same spot (hooray for libraries!).

It could be that Svankmajer is trying to isolate fetishism from an explicit sexual nature...the film quickly moves beyond the porn shop purchase to more vivid and involved flights of fantasy. The stop-frame animation itself lends a frenetic feeling, and the story does jump between several substories loosely united by interactions. Despite those facets, it seemed to move slowly, circling around some of the same images like a crazed chicken, or a fish in a tiny tub.

Perhaps the message is that everyone has their itch to scratch...but the nails never really did dig in for me. And if everyone is odd, then nothing is odd. This film sort of had that effect on me. A mildly profound statement, but ultimately, I suspect, an untrue one.

Not that there's anything wrong with you...nor me and my obsessive film reviewing...

Without saying too much about the actual "action", there is also a potential conclusion drawn from the film's flimsy plot that the boundary between imagination and reality might be more permeable than we suspect. That gave a little injection.

For those who find humor in this, I didn't. The closets? Yawn... Well maybe the recurring musical themes, especially the operatic baritone blast. The stories intermingle without ever interlocking. A more studied viewing may help more, it would not surprise me if there were some sort of secret decoder to the blood, bread, fish and further fetishes on display... But for me it just wound up as a sort of a coq-up.

Though a visually memorable one. Snorting the little crumb balls will remain with me. I actually preferred the shorter entrees from the "Food" chain of films served with this DVD. More focused and smaller in scope and time, but plenty of fantastic creativity with clay and otherwise. Especially the infinite breakfast club.

In his most original (at least from what I've seen), very different from his other films, most disturbing yet most hilarious film, the great magician Jan Svankmajer, animator-surrealist from Prague, makes his modern-day city the setting for the story of six ordinary people with extraordinary fantasies. The film that acknowledges as inspirations Sigmund Freud, Max Ernst, Luis Bunuel (the admitted fetishist himself) and the Marquis De Sade (all of them I am sure would love it) portrays the strange world of hidden fetishes that can be found in the most unexpected places. Three men and three women encounter one another through the day and exchange the knowing glances even though some of them don't even know each other but there is a certain connection and they feel it. They all are "conspirators of pleasure" who spend the most part of the film meticulously, painstakingly and creatively inventing methods, tools and constructions for fulfilling their bizarre fantasies. We will observe chicken suit with the wings made of umbrellas. There is a woman-post worker with a fetish for bread. She rolls up balls of bread and sucks them up her nose through a straw (honestly, not my idea of fun but hey, you should see the look at her face). There are unusual brushes made up of rolling pins, pan lids, and stolen pieces of fur that one man, the detective rubs over his body while his wife, the TV news-person feels neglected and buys some live carp that she strokes and feeds them the bread balls which were delivered by the post worker. The TV lady has no idea that she's been an object of a newsagent- guy's desire. He constructed the machine that consisted of several mechanic arms which can hug, stroke, rub, pull...gently while he watches her on TV and reaches his climax at the same time as she does helped by her carps but I am going to stop right here and only add that "some of our most exciting sexual experiences take place entirely within the minds of other people." (Roger Ebert - not about "Conspirators of Pleasure" but I thought it'd fit perfectly here)

What can I say? The film is a satire on human perversion but what makes it unique, its style. It has no dialog whatsoever but it is not needed, really. The lust and desires don't need words, they speak for themselves. There are the moments in the film when you'd look in total disbelieve at the weird characters and their bizzar objects of longing but you just cant help smiling. It's been over the year since I discovered Svankmajer and I've been trying to see anything that he's made. He's never disappointed me. He looks inside my mind, takes the the hidden desires and weird fetishes that I would never want to be uncovered and I would only admit to myself I have, turns them into the images hellishly disturbing but mesmerizing and hilarious and threw them back at me using his unmatched and brilliant (sorry, I have to use this word) combination of live action film-making, special effects, and his deservingly celebrated animations techniques.

Masterpiece of perversion, the fetish movie to end all fetishes.

Long Live Jan Svankmajer!

This movie stirred a lot of feelings in me. I admit, I first saw it because I love Svankmajer and was enticed by the idea of men "stripping" in it. LOL It was fascinating to note that each character has his/her own musical theme attached. Too bad that if I wore the chicken head, no one would understand!

But what got me was the two men Kula and Beltinsky. These guys actually turned me on, sad to say. Between the fact that they are the only people we get to see "naked" in the movie (interesting that Svankmajer avoids the genitalia!) and the fact that they give the most convincing orgasms, they practically got me aroused with them! Of course, I'm glad that the newsreader "orgasms" in the movie, so to point out that the men weren't completely sexually dominant, but I still find it fascinating that those men were able to climax in VERY believable fashions! (isn't it said somewhere that men can't give faked orgasms?)

In addition, I loved the intimacy with which the camera explored both men's bodies. Even if the genitalia wasn't shown (it didn't necessarily NEED to be shown, as their voices were enough), the images of their feet, legs, buttocks, and chests was VERY enticing, as well as lovingly portrayed. Both men are considered to be "unattractive" by the masses, being "lumpy," overweight, and lacking in muscular tone. But I found them beautiful in the same natural way that people like James Broughton and Walt Whitman prove. I'm not sure if Svankmajer agrees, but he clearly shows the beauty of the male body in such sensual, loving and erotic ways. As a closing note, the guy playing Beltinsky has probably the most BEAUTIFUL feet of any Czech actor.

Wow, can't believe I said all that, but then again, this movie DOES spark interesting feelings! ;) Write me if you feel similarly!