Uncouth Reflections

Paleo Retiree writes:

Arielle Dombasle gives her all … as do many other cast members

A beyond-pretentious and dirty-minded Alain Robbe-Grillet art-sex movie from 2006. He made it at the age of 84! — gives an aging, dirty-minded man hope. An art historian in Morocco looking into Delacroix’s visit to North Africa finds himself — as people in literary art-sex works often will — drawn into a series of strangely sinister “Is it real or did I dream it?” games. Here, they concern spirits, a murder, an S&M parlor, corrupt police … Lots of Escher-like imagery, including arches, checkerboard patterns, stairways, and corridors; a lavish amount of skin; many S&M tableaux; recreations of Delacroix’s paintings and drawings; and numerous resettings of the terms of the film’s own narrative …

“Gradiva” gives the words “intellectual” and “oneiric” new meaning — people seem to be endlessly walking into and out of each other’s (strangely sinister) fantasies and stories. The film represents an intellectual’s idea of dream logic; it’s overlong; it’s very silly; it’s more of a literary man’s idea of what a movie should be than a movie in its own right; and it’s so flat-footedly directed that it really doesn’t work — although with Robbe-Grillet, who’s perversely proud of alienating any possible audience, how to explain what “not working” means in the case of his movies? Is his flat-footedness a deliberate strategy? Or does he just not have much of a directing gift? But, despite everything, I was amused by the film’s French-establishment high-faluting-ness and more than a little turned on by the abundance of chic, straight-faced, (strangely sinister) art-house nudity. The Wife and I both dozed off a few times watching the film, but neither of us minded. And god bless the performers for showing up and pitching in.

Watching the film got me musing … Having grown up during the ‘60s and ‘70s, and having been educated on a lot of modernist art, I get — and am capable of enjoying — a play of push-and-pull with narrative. The artist can draw the audience in and then pop ‘em out — and if he/she can do it strategically and shrewdly, this push-pull can become flirty and dance-like, a sophisticate’s way of spicing up the usual basics of identification and fantasy. But I have to confess that on some ultra-basic level I don’t get someone like Robbe-Grillet, who only wants to alienate the audience. He doesn’t feel an obligation to draw us in; he only wants to push us out. There’s no playfulness or wit, there’s no enhancement, there’s no heightening. It’s just tiresome — what’s in front of us is totally flat. So what’s the point? “There it is” — OK, sure. But really-really, what’s the point? Without the movie’s (strangely sinister) nudity and sexual provocations, there’d be nothing onscreen to enjoy at all.

• For anyone who’s interested in sampling a few films that supply both a decent amount of modernist game-playing as well as a lot of hotsy-totsy juice and dreamy involvement, here are some titles: “Sex and Lucia,” “Romance,” and “Eugenie, The Story of Her Journey Into Perversion.” The trash-poetry horror films of Jean Rollin deserve a look too.
• I once wrote a little something about “Romance,” and a little something else about “Eugenie.”
• Here’s an interview — a strangely sinister interview — with Alain Robbe-Grillet. Whew, could that man go on.