eXistenZ (1999): Bleeding Reality

eXistenZ (1999)
dir: David Cronenberg

In Spring 1999, things were OK in America enough to be wondering whether reality was reality. Not that this hadn't been an idea for years, but in mainstream wide-release cinema, this idea hadn't been explored in such techno-garble as in this series of three months.

The first release was in March. It was an Asian-inspired, anime-tinged sci-fi action blockbuster from two guys who had only had one then-little-known film to their credit. Those guys? The Wachowskis. The film? The Matrix. The Matrix posited that people were being used as batteries, and were also being fed a false reality to live in. And there was a real reality where humans were trying to overthrow a computer/robot dictatorship who were harvesting humans. The Matrix was a mega-success, obviously.

The third release, in May, was a remake of sorts. The Thirteenth Floor was an adaptation of the novel Simulcron-3, which had been previously adapted as a German miniseries in 1973 as World on a Wire (original: Welt am Dracht). The Thirteenth Floor concerned a 1999 company who has created a simulation of 1937 Los Angeles. The people in the 1937 simulation figure out that they are a simulation, then the 1999 simulation discovers the same thing. Then it pops up to 2024, which may be a simulation as well. The Thirteenth Floor made a modest $15million.

In between the two was a little-advertised, wider released, art house movie from the director of The Fly, Videodrome, Naked Lunch, and the j.g. ballard adaptation Crash (not to be confused with the race-baiting Oscar-winning Crash). In April, David Cronenberg released eXistenZ, a movie about people who put themselves into alternate realities of other people's creations and lose track of their own. For a wide variety of reasons, eXistenZ made only $3m, but developed a cult following.

While the movies all deal with alternate, techno-realities bleeding into reality, and the question of what reality is anyways, ultimately they all have widely different approaches. The Matrix was all about humanity being forced into a techno-reality. eXistenZ is about people who willingly enter techno-realities in order to escape their real life. And, The Thirteenth Floor is about people who make techno-realities and techno-people in those techno-realities.

In eXistenZ, David Cronenberg begins the movie at a marketing event for a new game system, the titular eXistenZ. The game system is a fleshy pod monster with nobs you touch in certain ways to make it squirm and wiggle. The system is plugged directly into your body via umbilical cords that plug into bio-ports which have been inserted into the spine of the game players. Just as the game is beginning, a psychotic person from an underground Realist movement pulls out a gun made of flesh and bone, and shoots the game designer with a tooth.

From there, eXistenZ is a video game road trip with the game designer, Allegra Geller (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and a marketing guy, Ted Pikul (Jude Law). Allegra insists she has to port into her pod with somebody friendly to make sure the game isn't damaged, but Ted doesn't have a bioport. They have a series of encounters trying to get Ted a working bio-port, and then enter eXistenZ, the game. eXistenZ, the game, is blatantly styled after a game, with characters going into game loops, terrible characterizations, and quirks like being able to pause the game.

This game of eXistenZ has a goal of either saving or destroying the plant where they make more game pods, and deciding who is double crossing who and whether you want to be part of a inside-a-game Realist movement.

Once the game of eXistenZ seems to be over, there is a war outside the chalet where Allegra and Ted had been plugged in, and she defeats an opposing manufacturer. And then we're popped out to a previously-unseen reality where all the actors in the film have been plugged into transCendenZ, a video game with reality-based hardware. Allegra and Ted were just playing a game, and then they shoot the marketers of transCendenZ, screaming the victory call of eXistenZ in the name of a realism movement, and then nobody knows if they're in reality or in another game.

Much has been made about how games with a high enough factor of realism causes somebody to lose track of their reality thinking the whole world is a game. Or, about how Cronenberg was making a movie that was very much about body parts, invasion, penetration, and anal sex (without there being any actual sex in the movie).

Another layer that Cronenberg added was that this was a post-modern critique of video game story lines, and of itself. There are hints all over the place, including the tooth gun, that this isn't reality. But, he hammers it home when Jude Law makes a pointed remark asking whether Allegra things they can get a bioport at midnight at the local Country Gas Station, and the next shot is of a full-service gas station with the name "Country Gas Station." This simultaneously points out the obvious mundanity of some of video games' naming tropes (latest example is in Legend of Zelda: Link Between Worlds, where a bee guy's house is marked by a gigantic fucking bee on the front of the house), while also poking fun at itself for doing the same.

Throughout, Allegra is making comments about the characters being flat, having terrible arcs, and what reality actually is. It is a movie as a video game commenting on video games as movies. Increasingly, in the world of video games, things were still being pushed for more and more cinematic stories and more and more realism. One could look at the Trilobyte or Tex Murphy or Phantasmagoria series of games where filmed actors were integrated into computer generated sets in order to give the game a more cinematic feel.

As with computer games, the victims trapped within the realities of transCendenZ are willing victims who are testing out their next purchases. They are willingly subjecting themselves to these bleeding realities created by other people, if only for 20 minutes, or a few hours, or several days. Unlike World on a Wire, The Matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, or even Inception, the society losing their grip on their reality in eXistenZ are paying to enter these alternate realities. The society of eXistenZ leads more naturally to the society of Her, where our dreams and alternate people are marketed to us. The consciousnesses of the OSes in Her could be compared to The Thirteenth Floor consciousnesses which have been created in the simulations. But the consumers who are also losing themselves with these non-people are willing to do it. What Cronenberg is positing is that we are willingly going to march ourselves into a world lacking in reality, even as our subconscious is trying to make non-organic things like video game systems into organic ones in order to ease our mind about losing reality.

Ultimately, eXistenZ is a niche movie aimed at a then-increasingly-less niche market. It criticizes as it indulges, and is as modern as one could get. Characters criticize on themselves, and the world around them, and they have non-sex with technology. eXistenZ may still be eons away, but as a critique on the world at large, it is an especially condemning one. That it does it in a wild style of suspense thrillers, makes it a hilariously easy pill to swallow.

The Skin I Live In (2011) and Victim (2010): Adaptations and tonalities

The Skin I Live In (2011)
dir: Pedro Almodovar

Victim (2010)
dir: Matt Eskandari; Michael A. Pierce

One of the challenges of being both a cinephile and a reader is watching an adaptation of a book that you have read.  Some adaptations take the base material as a starting point, and change the plot points at random for what the director would consider a better or more honest experience..  Some adaptations are completely faithful and get the book just right.  Some miss whole points of the book because the book was overstuffed, or the points didn't fit.  Just as there are many way to read a book, there are infinitely more ways to adapt a book.

On Wednesday, I looked at how Mary Harron's adaptation (and promotion) of American Psycho could have missed the underlying points of Bret Easton Ellis' novel, but then wrote about how maybe it didn't due to thematic clues.  There were choices that she made that were antithetical to what a reader may have wanted, especially with the elimination of the extremely violent scenes in order to focus more on the dark humor and social satire of the novel.  In doing so, she may have also been attempting to make it easier to read the layers, if she knew it was there.

Today, I want to look at one book, and how it was adapted by two different filmmakers.  The first film is a Spanish film from acclaimed director Pedro Almodovar, who uses the source material as a starting point to make a very Almodovar film, while also staying true to the messages of the book.  The second film is a low-budget American film which strips the source material to the bone, changes it just enough to not have to pay for rights to the author, and creates a stripped down, streamlined horror film.

The book in question? Thierry Jonquet's Mygale, a very short French novel whose title translates to Tarantula.  The book is a sado-masochistic horror noir thriller black comedy.  It tells a dual story that comes together in the end.  The first story is the sado-masochistic story of Richard, a successful plastic surgeon who has a beautiful mistress, Eve, with whom he resides in a country mansion.  They seem to have a relationship fully based in animosity, and most evenings he takes her out for escorting on severe sado-masochistic adventure, in which she seems totally complicit. Richard also visits his daughter in an asylum who self-mutilates and is on a suicide watch.  The second story is about Alex, a petty thief who wants to get plastic surgery because his face has been recognized.  Alex sets upon kidnapping Eve in order to force Richard into giving him plastic surgery.  Alex is also looking for an old thief pal of his, Vincent, who has been missing for years.  These threads are tied together by a late book reveal of Vincent having raped Richard's daughter, he is kidnapped by Richard and turned into Eve, with full on descriptions of the prolonged torture and transformation process.

Essentially, the novel is a rape-revenge novel (the revenge committed by the family of the victim, in the tradition of The Virgin Spring and Last House on the Left).  Almost all of the horror is committed on a woman who used to be a man who violated a woman.  And, the rest of the horror is on the man who is becoming a woman.  It is a novel completely steeped in gender issues which also makes it clear that everybody is damaged in some form.

The tonality of the book waffles between horror and comedy and drama and Marquis de Sade sex farce. Given the complexity of this novel, and the variety of tonalities that it waffles between, it is easy to see how this book could be adapted wildly, without even completely changing around the elements to make a story of your own.

The Skin I Live In (2011)

While The Skin I Live In was released in 2011, the movie had been announced in 2002 by Almodovar.  This was a passion project of his, who had read the book in the 90s.  It didn't get released stateside until 2004, and then only by a pulp distributor (mind you it is a fantastic novel that I highly highly recommend), so it isn't exactly a widely known novel stateside.  By announcing his film first, and by actually buying the rights to the novel, Almodovar had full license to the book, and was able to keep the elements he wanted, change the elements he needed, and make everything his own.

One of the things one notices when comparing The Skin I Live In to Mygale is that Almodovar completely changes the tonality of the story, while still keeping some of the themes and adding in that flavor of Spanish-fried soap opera melodrama that he has done so well since All About My Mother.  It is just as interesting to note what he throws out and tones down as what he keeps in.

The first thing one notices that Almodovar completely throws out is the sado-masochistic relationship between Vera (Almodovar's Eve) and Robert (the surgeon).  Unlike Mygale, we're introduced to Vera as a forlorn woman in a body suit, who is not specifically trying to piss off everybody.  And, she is kept in her mansion instead of being taken out for abusive sex setups.

Almodovar makes Vera much more of a deeply fragile but tough person. Not somebody who is pointedly resentful of her situation, but is passively playing the long game.  He makes Vera far more feminine than Eve, and even has Vera played by an actress instead of an actor in drag.  Almodovar also has Vincente played by an actor, instead of the same actress as Vera, and also has Vincente possess a bit more femininity in his scenes as Vincente than the other male characters in The Skin I Live In. Almodovar's Vincente is also no longer a thief.  He is a regular missing teenager who had once worked in his mother's dress shop.

Almodovar also severely remade Alex.  Alex becomes Zeca, who is still a thief who needs to have plastic surgery.  Zeca, however is no longer looking for his partner Vincente.  Instead, he is actually the son of Marilla, Richard's maid.  And, Zeca is also Robert's half-brother, though neither of them know that.  Zeca also had an affari with Robert's wife who had been off to be with Zeca when she got into a car wreck killing her.  Didn't I say that Almodovar had wanted his melodramatic elements?

Almodovar spends the opening and closing 40 minutes in the post-surgery present, using the reveal of the history of Vincente's rape and his transformation into Vera for the centerpiece section of the film.  He also plays down the initial torture and brainwashing period required to feminize Vincente in order to focus more on the relationship dramatics of the central "family" of Robert, Vera, and Marilla.  Even Zeca's rape of Vera, and subsequent murder, is mainly an impetus to draw Robert, Vera and Marilla into more honest and intimate relations.

Almodovar's main themes transformed from basic rape/revenge and Stockholm syndrome black pulp into being about change and family ties that bind and strangle.  Marilla is tied to Zeca, even though she doesn't want to be.  She lets him in, but can't kill him.  In turn, he ties her up and gives himself permission to run rampant through the house.  Marilla's ex lover, Zeca's father, was a crazy servant she hasn't seen since the affair.  Robert is completely devoted to both his daughter and wife though they're long gone.  He's also devoted to Marilla who is essentially the only family he has left.

Almodovar is also about change.  Robert changes skin to make it more flame retardant after his experiences with his wife's firey car accident.  Robert has already changed from family man to violent vengeance seeker. Vincente changes into Vera. Robert's daughter changes from socially inept into traumatized victim. Everybody and everything in Almodovar's film is based on what you see and what isn't there and what is changing.  People are watching people change.  Everybody has windows into everybody else's room. The basement operating rooms are defined with glass and clear plastic hangings.  Yet, for all this supposed transparency, secrets are abound, and as people are changing if you can watch close enough.

However, Almodovar also kept the horror of the story.  It utilizes three of the most violating experiences one could survive.  One is the rape of a woman.  Another is the realization that what you did was rape when it seemed to start out as mutual longing.  And the third is the removal of the most basic identity one has: their gender.  But, he buries all this horror in the Almodovar family drama, without losing the themes of gender identity, violation of women, and deep protection and revenge by a father for his daughter.  Using the horrific, but not contentious, elements of Mygale, Almodovar crafted something completely different, and yet based in the same story.  While it is completely unfaithful, in tone, to the novel, it is completely faithful to Almodovar and should be viewed as a separate entity.

Victim (2010)

Except that somebody trainspotted Mygale the year before and made a completely low budget rip-off called Victim, which stripped out 2/3 of the book to focus on the torture and transformation process for 70 minutes.  Victim is a horror movie straight up. It starts with a video rape of a cute girl, then switches to the kidnapping and torture of a dude in LA.  The dude is kept in a basement dungeon, where he is beat, brainwashed, and feminized (to the point of getting a genital transplant, but not breast implants) by a plastic surgeon and his dumb man servant.

Victim completely focuses on the torture while also saving the rape/revenge reveal for the finale.  It eliminates the mistress portion of the novel.  It eliminates the Vincente searching story, and replaces it with a half-assed cop search story.  The novel is completely stripped away to explore the torture of brainwashing and forced gender changes.  It also adds in the weirdness of the brainwashing the rapist to pretending he is the daughter of the surgeon.

What Victim adds in is a replication of the original rape/murder.  The climax of Victim has the surgeon watching the violation of his daughter, while the rapist is actively raped by the man-servant in a replication of the hotel room of the original violation. The surgeon wanted to make the rapist experience exactly what he had experienced when he was the rapist in the beginning.

While it is a different movie in terms of tone, Victim feels like the movie that Almodovar stripped out of The Skin I Live In.  Watching the two as a back-to-back double-feature feels like you're watching the missing segments that were simply too icky for the first.  Victim is rougher, more brutal, and generally raw.  It has a stream-lined simplicity that makes Victim a sleek bullet of ugliness, especially if you ignore any of the cop scenes which seem to be completely superfluous to the movie as well.

Weirdly, both movies are at their strongest in a double feature with each other.  Victim is a fascinatingly bitter movie, which focuses on the torture of a man, and never loses sight of that.  It's a more straight-forward feministic rape-revenge.  While, The Skin I Live In is far more oblique and dramatic.  Together, they form a complex morality that is a potent duality.

American Mary (2012): Feminism through Independence

American Mary (2012)
dir: Jen and Sylvia Soska

Last month, we had a variety of rape-revenge movies directed by men.  There was The Woman by Lucky McKee, I Spit On Your Grave by Mier Zarchi, and Ticked-Off Trannies With Knives by Israel Luna.  Ticked-Off Trannies had men either in drag or identifying as women getting raped, but the other two are women getting raped.  We explored the differences between them, and how the point of view of The Woman makes it much more problematic than I Spit On Your Grave, even if it shies away from the actual acts.

In 2012, Jen and Sylvia Soska made their second horror movie, American Mary, a rape-revenge horror movie they combined with the body horror genre, the Giallo genre, and the coming of age genre.  While the end result of this genre mashing isn't disturbing, scary or intense, it is moody, gothy, tense at times, and wholly fascinating.

American Mary refers to Mary Mason, a young medical student studying to be a surgeon of some kind. She has financial difficulties, and is targeted by her professor for various minor indiscretions, such as a phone ringing in class or missing a lecture. While the audience may think that some sort of reprimand is justified (letting your phone ring in class is just plain rude), Dr Grant seems to take special delight in making the reprimand seem personal and harsh.

In order to make ends meet, Mary applies to become a stripper, but due to a last minute circumstance, ends up performing surgery on a guy who has been tortured for whatever reason.  The motivations of a strip club owner torturing guys and removing their eyeballs is never made completely clear, but the owner says "no questions" and the movie just lets it flow.

Following this surgery, she is contacted by a stripper named Beatress, who has been getting plastic surgery to make her look like Betty Boop (if you squint your eyes).  Beatress has a friend, Ruby, who wants to be turned into a doll.  And, by "turned into a doll," Ruby wants to have her nipples and labia removed, and her vagina closed up as much as possible.  This is because Ruby wants to be idealized and not sexualized.

Meanwhile, at her residency, Mary is noted for her professional bedside manner, and is invited to a late-night after-hours party by Dr. Walsh...where she is drugged and raped (onscreen, briefly, but clothed) by Dr. Grant.  For whatever reason, she doesn't go to the cops, but drops out of med school, and decides to go into underground body modification surgery, where she eventually develops a good reputation under the name Bloody Mary.

But, first, she must exact revenge on Dr. Grant by performing her first BME surgeries (without anesthetic), including teeth filing, genital mutilation, tongue splitting, and amputation.  Weirdly, this series of surgeries happens offscreen, with a flourish of a body-mod hand drawing.

Bloody Mary becomes a bigger and bigger success in the BME community as time goes by.  She earns a reputation, and puts together a website, as well as does a series of surgeries on a pair of twins who run an influential website, or something.  The cops come snooping around the missing Dr. Grant.  But, they find nothing.

At some point, the movie mildly treads water in a reverse CSI mode, where we think the cops keep getting closer. When the movie has padded it's running time enough, it decides to kick in the finale. Finally, after all this time (which seems like weeks, if not months...especially since her reputation needed to develop), Ruby's husband sees the surgery she had, and kills Ruby, beats Beatress, and then attacks Mary, stabbing her.  But, Mary sews herself up to die of internal bleeding. Yeah, it is a bit out of the blue.

Outside of the completely left field ending, the movie is well executed and just plain moody.  It may be disturbing to people not into BME, but to those used to it, it is mainly just a picture about a girl who does surgery for awhile, with some detectives following her.  It's almost Giallo-esque, but it doesn't have the blood and gore scenes to back that up.  It's very body horror, but it rarely gets close to the surgeries to be in that horrific.  But, what it is is political.

In interviews, the Soska sisters have said that they started out as actresses where they would end up with bit parts that sounded like a Vivid resume.  Hooker #2 this, or Call Girl that. And, they wrote Dead Hooker in a Trunk to mock that.  Then, they wrote American Mary as a response to the idea that there really was no big named horror villain that was a female.  There was no real female equivalent of Jason or Freddy. And, in the vein of American Psycho, they chose to make the whole movie about the villain.

As such, they've made a movie about rape, rape culture, and feminine power in the face of it all.  While there are 5 speaking male characters, 3 are rather rapey (Billy Barker, Dr Grant and Dr Walsh) while 2 are rather nice.  And, Mary's only 2 "victims" are Dr. Grant and a security guard who comes across her and her post-surgery Dr. Grant.  Mary isn't a psychotic serial killer.  She just does body mods, and she is doing things her way.

The movie is also notable for its female point of view.  Some of the strippers who are at the club want to be strippers.  Beatress, looking like Betty Boop, seems to be making shittons of money stripping.  She is able to just randomly throw thousands of dollars on her friend's surgery ($12,200 to be exact) and provide some cocaine on top of it.  How?  I dunno!  And, the camera looks at female bodies, but is only lingering when a man is in the room.

It is all about the female perspective.