Blue Movie

IMDb's synopsis for Blue Movie: 'A woman escapes from being raped only to find herself trapped by a sado-masochistic photographer who, among other nasty things, gets off on consuming fresh human excrement.'

How could I resist?

That's not a rhetorical question. I seriously need to learn how to resist watching worthless arthouse garbage like this. Too many times I've been tempted by the controversial nature of a movie, only to be bored to tears by its pretentiousness. I must find a way to be more discerning - I could have been watching another gory Italian zombie film or sleazy giallo instead of wasting my time with this sorry mess, which consists of one nonsensical scene after another, all told in the most tedious fashion imaginable.

Admittedly, the film does deliver on the promise of transgressive content - there's about two seconds of a model jerking off the photographer, a nanosecond of graphic sex, some documentary war footage, and a scene in which a woman smears herself from head to foot with her own poo (which looks suspiciously like chocolate mousse) - but the vast majority of the film is the polar opposite of 'eye-opening': it'll have you struggling to keep your eyelids from closing.

1/10. There are many far better things to do with your time.

As difficult to review as it is to view this is one hell of a bizarre movie. Not to be confused with the Warhol movie, this is from Alberto Cavallone and is probably aiming at the same sort of sub art house audience, or as it was in the late 70s. Extreme and confusing, this begins with happy hippy outdoor romance which rapidly becomes a prolonged rape sequence but all shot in such a way as we are disorientated from the start. This dream/nightmare pattern continues as first this first victim then another are sort of taken in by a photographer, of sorts. he has once taken photos of war torn events and seems to have become traumatised by these images which we see in occasional montage in much degraded quality. In a similar way he 'looks after' the women and seeks to similarly degrade them while he skips about taking crazy photos of bent up soft drink cans. When vomit and excrement join the menu we gather things will not end too well.

This strange and rare piece of art-house sleaze starts exactly as it intends to continue. A prolonged and strangely edited rape scene, where a woman is attacked in some woods by a man with a stocking over his head, sets the tone for the rest of the film. She manages to escape the attack and flags down a passing car, driven by a man who takes her back to his house. He turns out to be a photographer who enjoys intensely dominant relationships with his models...

Cue ninety minutes of sexual degradation and humiliation, shot in a bizarrely minimalist manner that makes one think of early Abel Ferrara films. There are numerous strange sex scenes that vary from softcore, to near hardcore, to actual hardcore (only ever shown in brief edits). The film creates a very strange ambience and it's hard not to feel uneasy whilst watching the movie. The plot, although simple, is extremely difficult to follow as characters drift in and out of the story with little or no fanfare. There are also numerous oddly edited flashback sequences to add to the confusion.

What is apparent is that Cavallone is going all out for the sexual sleaze and attempting to package it in an art-house bundle. The film becomes more extreme, and scatological, until the "climax" where a model is forced to defecate in a litter tray, and then stuff her excrement into cigarette packets. Later on she is shown smearing faeces all over her body. Like all of the female characters in this film, it is hard to tell whether they are victims or consenting of the curious acts they are forced to perform. Certainly there is an overwhelming atmosphere of intimidation and misogyny, and Cavallone seems to take pleasure in presenting his subjects as submissive in the max.

Adding to the weirdness is real mondo footage that has been edited into the film at certain points. Scenes of executions and killings suddenly flash up almost at random. The footage in question is also extremely poor quality, grainy, and at times indistinguishable.

This is certainly a very strange film. Gritty pretension aside, it seems intended to be some kind of artistic piece, but this is thrown into question by some of the prolonged scenes of sexual dubiousness. I really don't know enough about this sort of film, or the director, to be able to completely assess the motives behind it- however take it as read that in places this movie makes you feel very uncomfortable. Fans of the work of people like Ferrara or Paul Morrissey, or generally of low-budget Italian sleaze, should take a look.

Normally, I pride myself on having an open mind. I also tend to like most surrealist films especially those by Arrabel, Jodorowsky, Bunuel, Pasolini and Peter Greenaway. However, I can't find anything at all to like nor recommend in this sleaze-fest. I have to say too that I tend to enjoy sleaze if it's at least entertaining. This film was not at all entertaining. About 45 minutes into the film, I was ready to call it quits. Even as thinnly plotted as this film seemed to be, characters wandered in and out without any rhyme or reason making the whole thing very confusing.

Even though Pasolini's SALO had it's periods of revulsion, at least I felt like I got something out of it at the end to make the time I spent in disgust, somewhat worthwhile. I can't say the same thing here. The films only raison d'etre that I could see was to show as much degradation upon women as possible and for no reason. Well, there was a reason, but after a while I just didn't care any more.

BLECH!!! 1/10

Hmm, this is one of those hard to divine films. A lady escapes rape and is taken into the home of a photographer. Things get a little strange from here. Actually things are somewhere away from normal from the outset. The attempted rape is choppily edited, the lady's escape occurring before we see much. And before she meets her rescuers car we hear Bach from a radio and the cries of a DJ of electric breeze, that this isn't life but culture, revolution, joy. This is important I think. Our heroine Silvia (Dirce Funari) winds up at the pad of Claudio, and he dispassionately trains his studio lights on her as she recounts her trauma. Then she is mostly abandoned for a while, she flits about Claudio's place scanning art (pots, dolls in jars, a key, eyes), she revisits her encounter in hallucinatory nightmare and goes through a few quirks of low key strangeness. In the meanwhile we learn more about Claudio, photography is not his real job and the cut-off between reality and art, and culture is reinforced, beautifully so in a scene in which his light upon a naked model dances with her hand trying to preserve her modesty. And as the film goes on we go deeper, Claudio was a war reporter, he is traumatised and his inner wounds have lent themselves to his approach to women, art and objects. Things slowly build, with a fair dose of nudity and perversion (a highlight being a lady eating crumbs off Claudio's chest rapidly intercut with her giving him a handjob) and weirdness mounts, but sadly there isn't too much suspense. The editing robs the film of conventional sense of time which is no bad thing in itself, but neither the writing nor acting is strong enough to provide the sense of power dynamics which are essential to such a closed affair as this, so when things really kick off they don't have as much impact as they should. Still, the dislocated weirdness is a significant dreamy draw with a good number of individual unusual scenes and some unsettling wartime footage, and there are some interesting scat shenanigans towards the end which both relate directly to Claudio and draw comparison with (far superior) Sweet Movie. And the ending is just the right kind of mind twister, leaving us to wonder just whose madness we've been embroiled in, just what everything that has gone before means. Altogether its a fun watch, touching at art, trauma, madness and sexual perversion, all the good stuff basically. Plus the women are gorgeous and the soundtrack is pretty much all Bach, so aesthetically its a class act. Not something that leaves a real big impression, but if surrealist exploitation trash is your cup of tea this one is definitely worth your while.