Métamorphoses

No review needed. If you watch this movie and you find it enjoyable, stop, leave what you are doing, and seek a psychiatrist with urgency! you are literally minutes away from a mental breakdown and your life and others are truly in danger.

Metamorphosis has a lot of nice earthy action in nature. Greenery is the same to any era, as is sex and human interaction between people young enough to deserve their carnal behavior. The stories of Ovid lend a legitimacy. But Honore adds a very homey French familiarity with the human body and it's activities missing from modern synthetic US cinema. I don't know if the film is really that good or I liked it so much because it has been too many years since my last roll in the hay.

Christophe Honoré is one of those typical French author cineasts: it doesn't get any artier than this. Nothing wrong with some pretentious French cinema of course. Métamorphoses has some very strong and unique moments, especially because of the transgressive way Honoré explores Ovid's mythological universe and transports it to a contemporary context. On the other hand, the transgressive style and content are harmless and even quite loyal to Ovid's poem. Seen in that way, this film isn't transgressive at all and has more of an artsy, experimental pretence. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy it, but it all is quite superficial for a movie that attempts to be something much more. The cinematography is extremely beautiful though, as well as the soundtrack and some of its symbolism. But when it comes to French l'art pour l'art cinema, I think Les rencontres d'après minuit succeeds way better in its intent. Maybe because, although the film also is very autoletic, it transcends itself by subverting some bourgeois notions. Something Métamorphoses didn't do at all. But then again, maybe it's just me and my limited way of experiencing films like this.

At this point in my reviews I usually provide an objective summary of the initial plot, before launching into my view of the movie. That is impossible with this movie as there is no discernible plot.

Apparently the movie is about gods walking on earth and frolicking / toying with humans. That much is consistent with what I saw, but that provides the background to the plot, at best. Beyond that, there's nothing.

Quite random and nonsensical. One scene doesn't seem to follow from another. If each scene is a mini-story, they're pretty boring, pointless, inconclusive stories. Which would sum up the entire movie - boring, pointless and inconclusive.

The ancients constantly retold myths, telling them in what for them was contemporary setting, and adapting the morals and meaning as well. In fact Ovid changed and moralized a number of Greek myths for his audience. I found this collection to be quite fresh and well done and highly recommend it.