Infidèles

10 is for Marcel Schlutt who is naked throughout and utterly wonderful to behold. The film is pure Warhol in concept and really misses the mark pretty much although ultimately saved simply by the presence of Schlutt who is a chunk if there ever was one. In fact I went through my DVDs and discovered I have two other Schlutt films, Locked Up and Alex and Leo which I will be watching shortly since I am doing a mini-film festival with my best bud, something we are having an absolute blast doing. Of course, with IMDb as an instant resource at our fingertips the festival has sufficient ground to keep everything and everyone afloat. One thing my bud and I agreed on is that the title Unfaithful is never explained.

This movie questions the authoritarian role of a director while making a movie: the control over the story, the actor, the viewer... Pérès is smart enough to look into every aspect of the making of a movie and brave enough to show what is usually hidden in films and to withdraw what is usually shown by other directors. That's probably why he plays in the film, to let the viewer observe the whole experience and make up his/her own opinion about this movie and about cinema.

This is not an entertainment and you need to forget what you usually expect to enjoy this movie. If you don't like that kind of movies, don't watch this one, and if you watch it by mistake, perhaps you should take a moment to think about what you saw before sending your comments to IMDb...

Being a gay man I am always embarrassed with a huge number of gay 'directors' who made so many bad gay movies. This one is a serious candidate for the top spot on the list of worst gay movies ever made. There is no story, although there are many of pointless dialogs such as ..'I am going to make coffee now. Would you like some coffee?'.. Two (only) actors speak English with annoying accents, occasionally switching to German for no particularly good reason. I am often willing to subject myself to a torture of watching a bad movie if there are some particularly hot scenes in it. Not here! The sex is explicit but lacks any passion, innovativeness or eroticism. If you take it as a porn movie -- it is a very bad porn, too. Half of the movie is dark; or blurry; or both. There are many long scenes of a pitch black screen; or a pitch black screen with small dots of light of two characters' burning cigarettes. There may have been intended deeper 'artistic' effect of these pitch-black-screen scenes; and the director may have wanted to engage us in some special atmosphere through sounds or dialogs... Had the dialogs been intelligent, meaningful or even comprehensible. It all got lost in a terrible quality of the sound; or in lines such as ..'i will have a cigarette first (and sex later)'.. Do not watch!

' This film is not about sex, ' is said over an explicit image of sexuality. I think this is true, and not true, and the two fine ' actors ' in this film show step by step how you can deconstruct our society's standard images of pornography. And the film succeeds in doing so, and this is why some people would find it extremely boring. Paradoxically it also succeeds in being a very erotic film which is different from what the formulaic images pornography too often portrays. It is also a film that is constructed by voice overs often commenting on the process of making the film, as well as the two leads professions. This is sometimes in total darkness, and as this happens towards the middle of the film it can be disconcerting. As I watched I thought of Godard's experimentations, and of the bedroom scene in ' Breathless ' ( which broke new ground in the cinema ) and of course of the more controversial and audience catching ' Last Tango in Paris, ' where two people make a sort of contract to discover themselves in one room or apartment. Both the ' director ' and the ' actor ' experiment in exploring each other for a night, and to see what happens as anything can happen. As viewers we are invited to see some, but not all of it and we form our own opinion if they have succeeded in doing so or not. I think it is an excellent example of how we as viewers take in what we want to take in, and how too often we resort to expecting cliches. I like this film a lot but sadly I realise because it is a gay themed film it will have less of a chance of being viewed, and in my opinion it is fit for all adults to see. I also respect its courage in not making it easy viewing. For those who like Godard and even Chantal Ackerman this exercise in cinema is essential.