Leviticus (Adrian Chiarella, 2026)

Abomination

Year is only about halfway done and I'll say it: Adrian Chiarella's Leviticus is the best horror of the year.  I mean-- something better might come in October (Eggers' Werwulf comes out December), but can't imagine what that might be, or how it can be.

Furiousa: a Mad Max Saga (George Miller, 2024)

Book of genesis

George Miller's Furiosa may bill itself as a 'Mad Max Saga' but don't be fooled: it's less an action epic than an origin fable, a myth made in the telling. Where Fury Road was a hurtling bristling juggernaut of armor and wheels smashing everything in its way, Furiosa is more like a decades-long odyssey, of a woman seeking revenge, her home, and finally herself.  

Sleeping Beauty (Julia Leigh, 2011)

Sleeping beautifully

Australian Julia Leigh's debut feature Sleeping Beauty (2011) is the furthest possible take one can imagine on the classic 1697 French fairy tale "La Belle au bois dormant" by Charles Perrault, and on the magnificent 1959 animated version of said tale by Walt Disney (easily one of the handful of features the studio made whose visual grandeur--it was shot in Super Technirama 70, took eight years to produce, six years to animate in a distinctly elongated Gothic style--mostly overwhelms the standard Disney house tone of namby-pamby wholesomeness). This film is closer (closer, not necessarily close) in spirit and tone to Catherine Breillat's 2010 digital film, with the most significant difference being a kinky twist to the story inspired by a 1961 Japanese novella by Yasunari Kawabata.

It starts (unlike the two other versions) in modern day, introducing Lucy (Emily Browning), a university student struggling to keep above water financially--she works in a sterile office doing photocopying, waitresses part-time in a cafe, and on occasion volunteers sex in a high class bar (whether she goes through with it or not isn't clear). Eventually she answers a newspaper ad, and finds herself being interviewed by Clara (Rachael Blake). The job offered is decidedly decadent: she is to attend a formal-wear dinner serving wine in snow-white lingerie (that complements her equally pale skin), with lipstick that matches exactly (and this Clara explicitly specifies) the color of her labia.

The pay apparently is very good; Lucy returns seeking more work, and over tea Clara informs her that if she consents (and here's where the Kawabata story comes in), she will be given a powerful narcotic which will put her to sleep, be laid in a large bed where a client will be allowed to do everything and anything to her except penetrate her vaginally.

The sessions are the heart of the film, with Lucy's body often shot head-on, the feet towards the camera, the image striking in its symmetry yet with a tone of unsettling serenity. The clients respond in a variety of ways--one licks her face, another drags her off the bed. There's more, but easily the most disturbing reaction comes from one client who sits at the foot of the bed opposite Clara and tells her (while Lucy sleeps on) a long, rambling story that concludes with him despairingly saying he is all “broken bones.” It's a moment of emotional nakedness, and one can't help but think it's Leigh's way of making the character more sympathetic, which one initially resists--why would anyone want to feel sympathy towards this wealthy pervert?

One is compelled to do so. Stripped, the men reveal themselves to be a sad contrast to Lucy's gracefully perfect form. Oh, some of them show signs of good maintenance--some muscle definition here, there--but on the whole you can see where the sand has slipped, you see the pathos of their tiny phalluses, hanging limply over their shriveled scrotum sacs.

There's more. Lucy on occasion shows up in what looks like a research lab where a scientist takes a tube with a balloon attached and slides it down her throat (the researcher is possibly conducting a procedure called esophageal manometry, where the balloon measures the strength of the esophagus' contracting muscles); at one point Lucy sarcastically calls him “Dr. Frankenstein”--but why submit to these tests? They're apparently paid for--Lucy signs what looks like a waiver, and collects a yellow envelope that possibly contains money--but all that discomfort repeated (she does this several times) seems to indicate more than just a need for money. A masochistic enjoyment of choking? An unanswered desire for penance? A flirtation with the researcher (judging from their interaction, unlikely). Perhaps a combination of all three?

Even more puzzling is her relationship with a man called Birdmann (Ewen Leslie), a lethargic, despairing man who seems attracted to Lucy and grateful for her impromptu visits; conversely Lucy seems happier and more relaxed with him than with anyone else in the film--she casually agrees to his request to get married (nothing seems to come out of this) and, deadpan, serves him a bowl of cereal with vodka poured on top.

Later we meet a man who seems to know both Birdmann and Lucy from way back--an old friend, kind of. I say 'kind of' because when Lucy throws him the question Birdmann used to throw at her--“will you marry me?”--the man starts verbally abusing her.

Who is he to her? Who is Birdmann to her? Why does Lucy go to that lab? Leigh hangs these enigmatic (sometimes comically so) details like so many Christmas ornaments on the central fablelike mystery of Lucy lying asleep--what drives her to do this? She gets paid well--but for a whole night? And doing God knows what? Why do the men do what they do? That first client gives us an oblique clue (as a hedge against entropy and despair), but Leigh seems to hint at more--there's something primal, something powerful in the image of these wrinkled old creatures hovering like vampires over this helpless girl. Possibly Leigh wants to evoke a sense of mortality as opposed to renewal, of flesh corrupted by time lying side-by-side with the miracle of this timeless, ethereal beauty and her breathtakingly smooth skin.

One isn't quite sure what Leigh is getting at--whether she's attempting to say something specific, or simply creating a mood, a feeling. She seems to be a talented imagemaker who knows how to borrow eclectically--the decadence of the dinner scene is possibly inspired by Pier Paolo Pasolini's magisterially malevolent Salo (1975); the old men in bed with her seem to recall the erotic, deadpan comical surrealism of Luis Bunuel (I'm thinking Belle de Jour (1967)); the overall fairytale ambiance, however, seems all her own. Fascinating debut film--can she manage to say something more definite on her next venture, or will she continue with this more oblique approach, somehow retain our interest? One wonders.

First published in Businessworld, 5.10.12

Animal Kingdom (David Michod, 2010)

A mother's love in Animal Kingdom

Bless the beasts and the children

David Michod's Animal Kingdom (2010) is, to put it simply, a family crime drama set in Melbourne.

There's no sweep here, no operatic grandeur or long-rooted history, no sense of an era passing or an age dawning. Instead Michod gives us suburbs filled with tract homes, backyards defined by either chicken wire or rickety fencing, the odd farmhouse at the edge of a vast dry grassland.

It has a stunning opening: a young man sitting on a couch with his mother, watching TV. TV, mother, son, couch: totally innocuous until the paramedics arrive and--still within the same shot and all at once--we learn a story of abuse, neglect, traumatic loss, and monstrous lack of affect.

The rest of the film doesn't quite live up to that opening, but does show us with equally little fuss a family on the verge of imploding. Joshua "J" Cody, the young man (James Frenchville), is adopted by his estranged grandmother Janine "Smurf" Cody (Jacki Weaver); he's our means of introduction into the world of the Codys, a notorious Melbourne crime family that specializes in armed robbery (though certain members are not above maintaining a sideline in drugs now and then). 

Josh meets Uncle Baz (Joel Edgerton), who passes for the Voice of Reason in this family (Baz wants to quit the business and go into stock-brokering); he meets Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) who, at the other extreme, is the object of a manhunt by renegade cops. When the cops kill Baz (incidental or intentional we aren't sure), the death unleashes Pope to wreak bloody vengeance, with grave consequences.

It's not an all-out war, not even a small one; there is violence, but not baroque, or excessively glamorous (oftentimes the killings are suggested off-camera, through sound). If there's anything at all large-scale in any of this, it's the all-pervading sense of foreboding that hangs over the town (it's hard to call it a city--like Los Angeles, there's too much land in Melbourne stretching out in all directions, a sprawling suburb in search of a city). Like Los Angeles, Melbourne seems supremely qualified to call itself a prime location for sunshine noir--that subset of crime noir set in an arid landscape of desert brush and sand, often in brilliant daylight. But not a cheerful daylight; instead it's relentless, implacable, unforgiving, like God's judgment beating down on us, refusing to turn His glare away.

Pope is a frightening presence. When he first shows himself it's at night, to avoid the officers; later he feels safe enough to go out with Baz and narrowly escapes being offed himself. J watches silently as Pope plans a retaliation killing in response to Baz's death; he watches silently as Pope threatens him (Pope is afraid J might betray them to the cops). With Baz gone, Pope has without a word assumed the patriarch role, or rather a parody of one, as cruel disciplinarian and child-consuming monster.

Yet for all that, Pope isn't the dark heart of the film, it's Janine. Motherly yet sensuous, affectionate yet ruthless, she's the enabler and supporter who makes the Cody family's criminal activities possible. It's as if she were two people--the first able to warmly welcome J into her home, the second able to threaten lawyers and police officers into giving her what she wants. She's actually creepier when she's being loving--you wonder if she's at all sincere, same time you wonder if she's the one who ordered you killed.

Michod's film brings to mind Ben Affleck's The Town--both are family crime dramas, both have a strong sense of place (one set in Boston, the other Melbourne). Michod's is perhaps grimmer and more unrelenting, more perversely elliptical (it keeps its camera gazing long after one expects it to turn away, keeps the camera at arm's length when one expects a closer look). Can the picture bear comparison with some classic titles--The Godfather films, for one? Yes, and to its credit, it doesn't even flinch.


4.30.11