Pierrot Lunaire (2014): A Woman Playing A Man Playing A Woman Playing A Man

Pierrot Lunaire (2014)
dir: Bruce LaBruce

SIFF 2014 Film #11
(Best of Festival)

Pierrot Lunaire is the Bruce LaBruce that you’ve come to know, expect, and love. But, it’s not mere political statement with hardcore sexuality. Pierrot Lunaire is a full frontal assault on your sensabilities that doesn’t ever let you get comfortable as you’re watching for its full 51 minute run time.

Did I just say 51 minutes? Yes I did. Being under an hour, Pierrot Lunaire barely counts as a film in length, but starts addressing so many different ideas in those 51 minutes that you can’t call it anything but. By the time, Pierre Lunaire is over, the audience will be overstimulated and exhausted.

Pierrot Lunaire is originally a series of 50 French poems by Albert Giraud published in 1884. These poems were translated into the German by Erich Hartleben. In 1912, Arnold Shoenberg created Three Times Seven Poems from Albert Giraud’s “Pierrot Lunaire”, an atonal musical “melodrama” that used speech-singing and a minimal chamber-esque group of musicians. And, finally, Bruce LaBruce decided to completely subvert that whole work in this short-ish film, which uses the Shoenberg work as his foundation, in as much as a subversive work can be further subverted.

Bruce LaBruce reimagined the main character, Pierrot, as a transsexual, a woman pretending to be a man. I say pretending because it's unclear if Pierrot identifies as a woman but dresses as a man because lesbians were generally not accepted, or if Pierrot truly identifies as a man.  Pierrot has a female lover, Columbine, who believes that Pierrot is a man. When Pierrot meets Columbine’s patrician father, the father figures out that Pierrot is a girl posing as a man, and prevents them from seeing each other. As a result, Pierrot embarks on a journey to covet and gain a real live penis for himself.

LaBruce tells the story in a manner similar to the intent of the original stagings of the play. The film is divided into the 21 different poems, each with a title. Each section of 7 poems are divided by modern old school club techno that sounds straight out of a German leather bar. In addition, LaBruce tells the story of Pierrot in two different stagings that he edits together: a cabaret-esque live stage staging, and a traditionally cinematic staging. LaBruce uses a variety of silent film techniques (a la Guy Madden) to pull all of the sections into a semi-cohesive whole, and even has title cards detailing the action on screen, while the poems undercut the action of the film because they have little to do with the onscreen action…or maybe they have everything to do with the action. I'm not entirely sure.

To say that I fully understand Pierrot Lunaire after a single screening would be to lie. This is a film that assaults you on multiple fronts. The music is old-school atonal classical with multi-chromatic poems being read/sang in a variety of tones that ranges from whispering to shrieking. The aural sensibilities never get adjusted from the deep bass of the techno that opens to the atonal apocalypse of the main music. Then trying to process the music and the poems with the multi-level on-screen action, plus having silent-film title cards. It’s a crime on your brain.

For me, Pierrot Lunaire will probably stand up on rewatches. Or, it may possibly fall apart under its own pretension. I don’t know. I know that I will enjoy figuring out what it means. It’s a puzzle box of an arthouse film. I’m not sure if LaBruce is saying something vast about gender, or just fucking with us (are we ever sure of that?). Even if this movie is all style with little substance, it will still be fun as hell to watch and rewatch.

Best of Festival.

The Strange Colour of Your Body's Tears (2013): Avant Garde Giallo

The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears (2013)
dir: Helene Cattet, Bruno Forzani

SIFF 2014 Film #8

In the follow-up to 2009’s Amer, Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani created another psychedelic cinescape of sensory overload. The Strange Colour of Your Body’s Tears is a 100 minute avant-garde experiment that tests the boundaries of storytelling and film itself. By using the visual and aural overload cues of 1970s giallo, Cattet and Forzani have concocted a singularly unique film.

Dan Kristenssen is returning home to his gorgeous apartment after a week away and discovers his wife has gone missing. Adding to the mystery, the door was chained from the inside. While investigating the disappearance, Dan discovers that his apartment building has plenty of mysteries and mysterious tenants.

But, besides a couple of twists that happen midway through, much of the movie’s plot and meaning is kept vague to the audience. Unlike with Amer, Cattet and Forzani aren't intent on creating a simply plotted story that captures what it means to be a young woman blossoming. This time around, they’re exploring a general Giallo-inspired plot, but the complications upon complications means that The Strange Colour remains completely vague.

Those looking for something direct or even coherent might be better served looking at different pastures. The Strange Colour isn't going to provide you any direct answers. It isn't going to give you an easy A-B-C plot that tells you something is the direct something is the direct something. It is a mood piece that intends to overpower the audience instead of making a coherent statement on its own.

However, The Strange Colour is excellent in creating atmospheres of a certain feeling. The atmosphere is moody and grotesque and psychedelic and overpowering in intensity. The overamping of sounds like leather rubbing against leather, doors creaking open, blood splattering, tile breaking, and even blades going *SHINNK* creates a sensory overload that pulls you in and pushes you out in a pulsing fashion.

The lack of coherence that's conveyed through the atmosphere does point to a certain student film-esque quality. The atmosphere for atmosphere’s sake, the sound, the cinematography and the editing are all top notch, but the lack of purpose seems so amateur. There is a drilling re-use of an S&M scene involving a knife of at least 5-6 times where you kind of get the point and nothing new is revealed in any of the later repetitions. There are spinning kaleidoscopic reflections upon reflections of stained glass windows and geometric balconies and doorways that are neat to look at, but sometimes it is little more than “Look what I can do with After Effects!!”

The Strange Colour feels less like a final film and more like an experiment that will lead to the next film in Cattet and Forzani’s career.  The film seems to be about the walls we build up between our self and our past. It explores our general abandoning of our history in order to deal better with our present. By creating the sense of horror, Cattet and Forzani have made the exploration compelling. But, without saying anything new that hasn't been said in other, more superior, films, The Strange Colour ends up being little more than a fun and amusing diversionary lark of an avant-garde film.