Quoi?

Words seem rather moot in attempting to describe a film of this nature. Roman Polanski's bizarre, unfunny, yet beautifully-made film about a beautiful but naive American who becomes trapped in a decadent setting of horny Italians and indifferent foreigners is almost too embarrassing to be associated with the great director. And yet, it kept my interest practically the whole way through.

Roger Ebert has often noted that it takes a great director to make a truly awful film. Polanski surely is talented but is this film a travesty? The truth of the matter remains that it is surely one most Polanski fans either have not seen or are avoiding like the plague. This may be a good idea. Nevertheless, there are reasons why this film seems to haunt the fringes of the cinematic world. It has often been compared to Alice in Wonderland with its plot of a young girl being thrown into one crazy situation after another within a confined space. As for any possible meaning or symbolism behind these set pieces, I have no clue.

Perhaps we are not supposed to look too closely. Maybe this is Polanski trying to relax and make a comedy, mixed inevitably with his trademark absurdity and sadness. In the end, the traits which make Polanski unique remain visible despite the surface appearing much too seedy and unwholesome for the average film viewer. This is a film that cannot be recommended or hated, only observed of how bizarre it truly is.

The parallel between the story of "What?" and "Alice in Wonderland" by Lewis Caroll is very interesting, and maybe this film is the most precise adaptation of Caroll's crazy story, precisely because it really shows all the sexual content of Alice's dream trip. The movie construction reminds the "passage" of Alice "behind the mirror": she escapes the cruel world (the rapists) when she goes down to the "loonies house". Mastroianni's pimp character reminds of the Mad Hatter, because he keeps asking Sydne Rome if she wants to have tea with him around five o'clock. Polanski's character can also be seen as the Mad Hatter sidekick in the book: he keeps fighting with Mastroianni all day long, as if it was some kind of game between them. Polanski is very funny as a nervous "little guy" with a splendid mustache! At the same time he was shooting "What?" in Italy, Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey shot "Flesh for Dracula" nearby, and that explains Polanski's apparition with mustache in a scene of this film. Of course, the "sexual innocence" of Sydne Rome put the film on the rank of "erotic fantasy". The tribute to "Alice" is clear, but it seems that the film may have influenced a great Italian erotic illustrator, Milo Manara, whose sexy heroins really look like Sydne Rome, and are often place in similarly "unvolontary" sexual situations (oooh, the pooor girl lost her clothes, what a shame!). Anyway, this is a crazy absurd funny and sexy film, that never takes itself seriously (at the end, Rome yells to Mastroianni: "Don't worry, this is only a film!")with a very colorful and "sunny" atmosphere.

Sydney Rome is an American traveling in Italy who flees to a private villa after being attacked by some really inept rapists. Within the estate she meets a bunch of crazy people, including former pimp Marcello Mastroianni in what has to be the craziest, most outlandishly go-for-broke performance of his career. Comparisons to Alice in Wonderland (always mentioned in conjunction with this film) are a huge stretch, I think. There's an innocent girl in a strange place surrounded by crazy people, but that's about the extent of the parallels. At best it's like Lewis Carroll reinterpreted by a horny high schooler who still giggles when he hears the word "breast." Nevertheless, for the first half hour or so I thought this was one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. Unfortunately it climaxed with Mastroianni crawling around in a tiger hide making meowing noises (whereupon Rome starts "taming" him with the whip). After that the film never really recovers the energy it started out with and viewers are left with little to do but wonder how Rome will be humiliated next (first her shirt is ripped, then stolen, then she walks around wearing a napkin until she finds another shirt, but then her pants are stolen, finally she loses the shirt, etc). I love unadulterated nonsense (SCHIZOPOLIS, FORBIDDEN ZONE, THE BED SITTING ROOM) but aside from a couple of choice moments this film's particular pointlessness was lazy and uninspired.

If you've ever longed to see Marcello Mastroianni being flogged in a tiger skin, What? is the film for you. He plays Alex, a smarmy ex-pimp who lives in one of those terminally fabulous villas that only seem to exist in Italian movies. He gets his other kicks by dressing up as Napoleon or crushing ping-pong balls with his feet.

Among the villa's other denizens are an arthritic pianist, a clutch of sex maniacs, an American husband and wife who bicker endlessly about time zones, a stone-faced German nurse who reads Nietzsche, a pair of sun-bronzed lesbians and a dying millionaire who expires with a blissful smile on his face - after getting a glimpse of the heroine's private parts. Sounds like a normal weekend round at my house...

Into this dislocated universe steps a wide-eyed, Henry James-ian innocent abroad. Sydne Rome plays a backpacking American hippie chick who escapes from an attempted gang rape on the Italian autostrada. (In their impatience to get at her, the would-be rapists get confused and start raping each other by mistake.) She hitches a ride to the villa in a giant metal cage, only to become the sexual plaything of all and sundry.

What? is one of those few movies to play on the obvious notion that 99% of all pornography is just plain silly - hence unwatchable to any viewer with even an elementary sense of the ridiculous. Its 'parody porn' screenplay reads like an LSD-fueled collaboration between Escher, Borges and Lewis Carroll. Not only is it far and away Roman Polanski's funniest film. It is also, quite possibly, his most stylish.

A well-timed revival of What? might do wonders to rescue Polanski from the Oscar-winning solemnity in which he has lately become mired.

The early 70s were the stage for many experiments. Barriers were being broken and the boundaries were expanded. In the cinema, taboos were challenged and defeated. It was a time for change, a time for improvisation. It was in the spirit of those times that Polanski made "What?" "What?" could be defined as a surrealistic modern "Alice in Erotic Land".

An innocent young and beautiful American woman, Nancy (Sydne Rome) - She is hitchhiking in Italy. The three men that gave her a lift try to rape her, but they are in such a hurry and are so clumsy, that one of them, having lost his glasses, begins to sodomize the other. A verbal fight ensues among them and in the confusion, Nancy runs away. One of them runs after her. In her flight she sees a funicular waiting there for her as on purpose. The funicular takes her to a white villa.

This villa is peopled by very bizarre characters. Nancy, running away from the cruelty of the world, has landed in the house of dreams. Is this her dream, is she a dream dreamed by other people, or both? This luxurious white villa located by the beautiful tyrrhenian sea seems very remote from everyday life. Among the characters there is a former pimp, Alex (Marcello Mastroianni), two french lesbians, a priest that watches everything with disapproving eyes, the paraplegic patriarch of the house with his serious-looking Nietzsche-reading German nurse, and even Polanski is present, as Mosquito, that has no love left for Alex, the pimp, with whom he's always arguing.

Nancy, interpreted by the gorgeously beautiful Sydne Rome, will be the object of desire of every male (excepting maybe the priest) inhabiting the villa. Even the growling dog falls under her charm, and the same happened to me.

Sydne Rome, in an interview in the DVD (released in Italy), defined "What?" as an erotic dream. This is exactly what I think.

Alex, the pimp (Marcello Mastroianni), will persuade her to engage in kinky sexual games. But don't you expect the sleaze displayed by other Italian films of the time - by these standards "What?" can be considered tamer than its Italian brothers. Still in some scenes Sydne Rome is shown in the nude, and in many others she's wandering around the house semi-naked. In the strange sexual games that happen between her and Alex, Sydne Rome has her clothes on. But believe me, these scenes are very sensual. The beautiful Sydne Rome, with her angel face and her large innocent eyes, and Marcello Mastroianni, wearing either a leopard skin or a Napoleon costume... well, it's something to be seen and enjoyed!

As Polanki has worked with a tight script and hasn't given much way to improvisation, "What?" seems sometimes more a theater play than a film. The characters are like dream figures and the conversations are surrealistic/symbolic. "What?" is a surrealistic comedy which is based mainly on the actions and words of the characters, as it happens in any good theater play. But don't get me wrong, "What?" is a film and feels like a film. It's just that the words in "What?" seem to weigh more than necessary and stifle somewhat the spontaneity of the acting. Apparently the actors in the film were not given the freedom to improvise and this spoils the fluency and the dreamy atmosphere of the film.

Take another Italian film made at the time - "L'Occhio nel labirinto" (Blood) by Mario Caiano. The script was probably hastily written. The characters are somewhat poorly developed, the film is a giallo that has psychoanalytical motives - a labyrinth, a killing, loss of memory, a white villa by the sea (yes!). It has flashbacks, fast hand-held cameras following the characters and unveiling the landscape. The story may seem to some a patch-up work - sex, crimes, psychoanalysis, the beach and the sun mixed together - but the film is entertaining and intriguing, even if it was made to earn a fast buck. The same cannot be said for "What?".

Polanski with "What?" wanted to make a sunny, dreamy and sexy film, and, in a way, he almost got there, but if he had let himself really go and had given the actors more freedom .... "What?" could have been something! As it is, "What?" is a half-successful psychedelic film, intellectual and slightly theatrical.

In spite of all, I think that "What?" is an interesting film - theatrically dreamy and psychedelic, and very, very sexy.