Les conspirateurs du plaisir

One-word summary: Masterpiece. This one keeps me mesmerized every frame for the whole 80 minutes. Surrealistic, fantastic, bizarre, fetishistic, fascinating, it is Jan Svankmajer's finest excursion into animania. Why this work, and this artist, toil in relative obscurity is beyond me. (Makes me wonder what *else* out there is this good but this hard to discover.) It is a guilty pleasure, indeed, to watch this, but as a work of cinema, it is wonderful. (The subject matter is quite incidental, really; my mind could easily be massaged for 80 minutes like this with just about anything Svank could concoct.) I daresay it's in or near my top 10 favorites, but it isn't supposed to be...

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.

The movie opens with decadent pictures of masturbation and bestiality, but the film itself isn't that offensive. It's often very funny, and some of the things we see are just wrong, so how could it possibly be offensive? It'd have to be bad to be offensive, and this is spectacular. The story itself concerns a handful of people who have a connection in one way or another -- a fat woman, who lives next door to a bearded man, who buys porn from a beady-eyed man; the mailwoman who delivers to the bearded man, and the mustached man seen by the bearded man in an antique shop. The movie is filled with deliciously gooey sexual symbolism and would make an interesting double bill with "Crash." (Though unfortunately for a film so concerned with the odd things that we see, the film itself has got that dull, brown look to it that seems common with European productions.)

The film is dialogue free, and there's an especially good use of music and sound effects to more than make up for it (we can almost experience tactilely their sense of pleasure, the ecstasy of the mustached man who massages and prickles his wet, hairy skin with various types of bristled brushes); it's better that it's silent, because it gives a fuller feeling of the audience as voyeurs peeping in on these individuals' various sexual exploits, who create objects that satisfy their needs. There are some scenes that are just...the weirdest things I think I've ever seen, or at least certainly up there: a woman rolling up pieces of bread between her fingers and then snorting them up her nose later on in the picture. Or my favorite, the climactic scene with the bearded man dressed as a rooster, with umbrellas for wings, attacking a dummy made to look like that female neighbor. (She herself has her own dummy made in his image that she uses for S&M enactments.) But more than just surrealism -- and this is pretty surreal (meaning that it's real but bent) -- it makes a pretty powerful statement on the dullness of home life, whether you're single or paired off. 9/10

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!

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.