Void

Unfortunately, Gasper Noe's Enter The Void, his third feature, is also his worst so far. He had eighteen million to make this one, and he spent most of the money on technical razzle dazzle while forgetting to make something engaging. His camera swoops and swan-dives all over the place in an attempt to recreate the vibe of a bunch of drug trips he took in the past, but the sheer volume of this hallucinogenic material ultimately buries the drama . I'm sure Gasper had a good time dropping whatever the fuck he dropped into his bloodstream, but I had an irritating time staring at his cinematic representation of it.

In a weird way, the film is structurally a remake of Irreversible infected with the tone and storyline of Philippe Grandrieux's intolerable La Vie Nouvelle (A New Life, 2002), a film that began with some stunning experimentation, but then plunged us into a world of monotony involving a prostitute and a pimp's dominance over her.

Like La Vie Nouvelle*, Enter The Void's biggest sin is being boring and repetitive. I Stand Alone, his best film, is this film's polar opposite, mostly because it has a fascinating protagonist we cared about. He was funny, too. The hero characters in this effort, a brother and sister whose lives have been altered by a tragedy, register as non-humans.

Before closing, I must admit that I have a pet peeve with films that depict nightclub/narcotic culture. I despise nightclubs and all they represent, so Void's nightclub focus didn't exactly warm my heart. This bias didn't kill the film for me, though; it just made a bad thing worse.

As I emerged from LA's Nuart Theater into the harshness of peak hour sunshine, I felt enormous relief that Enter The Void was over. I was free of its cloying mundanity. Yes, folks, a Gasper Noe film that was, ultimately, mundane.

Still, I look forward to Mr. Noe's next cinematic excursion. Perhaps he's gotten the self-indulgent rot out of his system.

* I found Grandrieux's Un Lac (A Lake, 2008) to be a far more effective exercise in abstraction and tone than La Vie Nouvelle, and a more immersive cinematic experience than Enter The Void.

Prunella, Sexting, and The Women Haters

A situation came up a couple of weekend's ago that brought some issues I often wrestle with to a head. An older married couple visited my gal and I and we watched some DVD's (Obecna Skola and Battle Royale). The wife looked through my DVD collection afterward and seemed troubled.

She asked me: "Do you hate women? You have so many movies in your collection featuring the degradation of women?"

She then smiled.

"You don't look like someone who hates women, Mark. You and Lynn (my girlfriend of three years) seem like a very happy couple. We both (her husband and her) like you very much and trust you completely. Is there something I'm not getting?"

This assumption -- that I hate women -- comes up often.

It is true that I own and am passionate about many movies, books, and works of art focusing on sexual violence, perversion, and extreme erotica. I have also made more than half a dozen feature length movies and many shorts, the majority of which feature some scenes of rape (men and women), torture, and general sexual deviancy.

I openly champion films such as I Spit on Your Grave, Assault - Jack The Ripper, White Rose Campus -- Then, Everybody Gets Raped, Straw Dogs, and the amazing Story of Prunella, an '82 hardcore masterpiece that most humans would be appalled by. I celebrate the works of Toshio Saeki, Stu Mead, and Suehiro Maruo. My optimism is kept aloft every week by the makers of Family Guy and South Park because these people challenge conventions inside the mainstream. That's a highwire act of awesome ability.

But regarding more extreme graphic content, people assume I'm not appalled by the content. There seems to be an underlying belief that I somehow condone the subject matter because I'm passionate about it.

I am a passionate person. I'm passionate about honest artistic expression. I happen to consider pornography an honest art form. I'm not referring to the producers or directors; I'm referring to the genre. Pornography dangles life in your face and makes you confront it. It is sometimes ugly and disturbing and gross and repulsive. The stuff that's least disturbing feels the the least honest.

Vivid Video is America's most popular producer of pornography. Personally, I don't find the Vivid view of sexuality to be an honest one. I'm sure Vivid doesn't, either. Vivid's vids are to sex what The Brady Bunch is to family. It's idealized. It makes people feel comfortable by slinging them crap. It wraps everything up in a neat package. Unlike reality. That's why it sells. People aren't too fond of reality.

I'm not big on neat packages. I never have been. I like raw, open sores. I like humanity spreadeagled. For some unexplained reason, the truth of anything releases the rot for me.

A common complaint after I screen a movie to the wrong person is: "Why do we need to see things like that?"

There are a dozen stock answers to the question, but the problem is really the person asking the question. They want the neat package. They want the lies. They want the denials, the pretense, the bullshit. No amount of truth will free them. Ever.

I like Truth. I don't care how much it stinks.

I really hate most Disney movies. They're utterly false. Filled with completely counterfeit notions of relationships, family, and human interaction. I'm sure even the executives at Disney know how untruthful their product is (relatively speaking, they are still living in the real world).

Ultimately, they're just business people. I don't blame them for wanting to make a buck. We all have to do that. I just find their product repellent. What I like is often called The Ugly Truth. But is Truth really Ugly? Does that mean lies are attractive? I've never found the Truth to be Ugly. I find it fascinating and liberating.

I'm fascinated by the deepest, darkest truth of the human spirit in art.

In an artistic sense, I have no use or time for people who dismiss art that appalls them. You know the type I'm talking about. The person who judges the work by its subject matter, not its execution.

Some art requires enormous courage. We live in an incredibly judgmental society in which the Hollywood mainstream represents the taste and critical reference point of the average human. No wonder anything more extreme or critical of the mainstream is naturally shunned. Hollywood, political correctness, and our education system have killed fascination. They've slaughtered curiosity. And when curiosity dies, knowledge will die with it.

Rarely do I meet other humans who are as curious about everything as I am. When I do, I want immediate intercourse with them The curiosity I possessed as a five year old is strong forty years later -- perhaps even stronger.

Do I hate women?

Of course not. Quite the opposite.

My mother is a woman. My sisters are women. My partners have all been women.

The fact is, men have issues with women that they don't have with other men because the nature of a man's relationship with a woman is entirely different.

Men are generally more frustrated by women because the relationship with them is more complex and comes with more expectations. With your buddies, you share and commiserate. With your partner, you share, commiserate, plan, grow, and negotiate changes within yourself in tandem with changes in them. You deal with a million years of different, gender-defining genetics, and you encounter complications simply arising from co-habitation.

All men hate women at times, just like all men hate the phone company at times, hate traffic at times, hate TV commercials, hate other men, and hate the ramifications of their own stupid decisions.

Quentin Tarantino has been brave enough to say it, and I'll say it, too: I love on-screen violence if it's done well. I love on-screen rape and brutality if it's done well. I love well choreographed car chases, fight scenes, martial arts duels, love scenes, and aesthetically powerful domestic violence (Once Were Warriors and Nil By Mouth spring to mind).

I saw Story of Prunella recently. It's easily one of the most powerful examples of true hardcore pornography I've ever seen. It must have been good because, even though I watched a friend's copy twice, I ordered it on-line for myself. The film features horrific rape, abuse, and general sociopathic behavior. Was it entertaining? Yes. To me, entertainment is that which holds my interest and stirs my psyche. Prunella most certainly did that with master pervert Phil Prince at the helm.

Bad women exploit, manipulate, and demean everybody around them. I hate those women. Equally, I guess I hate the men who allow them to do that. Weak men enable these monsters. They trade their self respect for a slippery hole. Ultimately, they get what they deserve.

Good women are upfront, forthright, independent, self-assured and comfortable with their sexual power (God knows they have it in spades!). Good men embrace this. I don't hate such people. On the contrary...

Is watching women being abused on screen an indicator of a man's hate for the gender? I don't think so. I'm not saying that some men don't hate all women. Plenty do. And they must have their reasons. But our interaction with art of any type is a complex, vicarious process. Do readers of Stephen King novels hate humans? Many humans die in King's stories after all. Are James North Patterson's readers people-haters? Considers the millions of murder-mystery fans out there -- are they all secret misanthropes? I doubt it.

Humans are fascinated by themselves. Why else is Big Brother such a hit!? Some humans are more fascinated by humans than others? My fascination begins where another's fascination ends. The length of human fascination and curiosity is infinite.

Sexual violence is particularly interesting cinematically because it possesses great power. Like smoking or dancing, it has a universal, sensual appeal. It impacts with primitive genetic memory and ignites our engines, delivering a vicarious buzz through which we experience highs and lows of fighting and fleeing. It's primal.

The truth of human behavior is we are animals restrained by a nurtured morality. Ours is an eternal struggle to find a harmonious haven between savagery and civility. Raw depictions of this struggle can only be helpful in understanding it. Unfortunately, rage at the object tends to override the investigative impulse. Again, the casualty is knowledge.

Society's refusal to embrace the truth about men and women (children or adults) can only end in chaos.

One present example of that chaos is the "sexting" epidemic that is currently sweeping the Westernized world. The mainstream press and its ignorant gate keepers are up in arms about this phenomenon, treating it like a disease of the year that has suddenly afflicted the youth.

Children as young as nine or ten are exchanging sexual messages via text and disseminating naked images of themselves. Some of these children are being charged with production and distribution of child pornography, an outrageous course of action that will do far more damage to them than the act of sexting itself.

In fact, sexting is what the world gets when it insists on being dishonest about the way things really are. Denial, as usual, has falsely inflated reality, giving birth to a strange hybrid through which the truth is now being channeled.

We are all sexual beings in different phases of development.

Alarmism about children of the same age exchanging messages and photos is a symptom of a society founded on gross ignorance, fear, and denial.

I had sexual feelings when I was eight years old. I expressed them with a girl my own age. I wasn't damaged by what I did. I wasn't traumatized. I was just developing at my own speed. It was an entirely pleasurable, innocent experience, and I remained innocent because nobody dirtied the water.

We live in a world where natural impulses have been demonized, where images that depict the truth are censored, and where simple displays of random sexuality are seen as harbingers of doom (Janet Jackson's so-called nip-slip, for example)

What we now have is the result of the world bullshit has made.

Do I hate women?

Of course not. Who has the time or energy for that?

I just don't have much love for the lies our TV's tell us.

No Morire Sola (I'll Never Die Alone)

I read the imdb reviewer Coventry's positive piece on this film -- "The South American I Spit On Your Grave" -- and went in search of it immediately.

I'm very partial to films such as I Spit on Your Grave and have shot a rape scene or two myself (Defenceless, Beyond The Pale, Marauders).

The Spanish/Argentinian title is No Morire Sola and the English title is I'll Never die Alone.

The only DVD I found (and purchased) was the Japanese version, which is retitled The Hell.

It's a pretty striking cover.

Needless to say, I was primed for something pretty special.

Unfortunately, the film fell way below expectations.

Let's be honest -- the draw of a film like this for the viewer is the opportunity to see (endure) scenes of aestheticized violence (rape and revenge).

Films such as Irreversible and I Spit on Your Grave promise a second-hand, vicarious experience of raping, being raped, getting angry, taking revenge, and feeling that justice is served.

Cinema is all about vicarious experience, even if the experience is often couched in misleading, academic, esoteric language.

Exploitation cinema appeals to our basic instincts. It gives us a safe arena to experience the unknown ,the unpalatable, and the downright illegal. If it's done well, with pace, fury, energy and passion, it's entertaining.

Unfortunately, No Morire Sola, though clearly well-intentioned, fails to perform its primary function.

Four girls driving across the Argentinian countryside are attacked by rapists. In an extended sequence, which, let's be honest, is the reason for watching this, the girls are raped and left for dead. Later, they are recaptured, roughed up some more, and left for dead. Later again, the surviving girls take revenge on the rapists.

It's the classic exploitation set-up, and on paper it works.

The challenge when you're screwing around with such familiar, been-done-a-thousand-times subject matter is making the predictable situations interesting. And impactful. Where the film fails initially is in the cinematography department. I don't know what video camera they were using, but the look of the film is terrible. Have you ever shot a person against a window and they go dark while the window behind looks like a blast from an atomic bomb. Well, there's a lot of that look in this. A solution would have been reflectors and more judicious placement of the camera.

The script? It's not in plain sight. The characters wander from scene to scene with no rigid purpose. There is zero suspense. The acting is drab. The pacing is haphazard. Overall, it's a sloppy effort.

So what are the rape sequences like? You know you want to know that. Well, as rape sequences go, they're flat and boring. Compared to similar sequences in Irreversible, the Death Wish films, I Spit On Your Grave, Straw Dogs, The Hunting Party, White Rose Campus - Then, Everybody Gets Raped, Raping!, Assault Jack the Ripper, All Women Are Whores, Fair Game, Flower and Snake, Red To Kill, Thriller - A Cruel Picture, they don't justify the film's existence. Which is a shame. Because it only really exists for these.

And the revenge sequences, of course.

Sad to say, they're flat, too. A bit of shooting. An extended burial sequence which just goes on and on to fill screen time.

A final criticism is the sound. It's almost non-existent. Although there are a few creepy music cues (courtesy of Hernan Penner), meaty, powerful sound FX such as gunshots, stabs, and punches are missing altogether. Their absence totally undermines some potentially harrowing scenes.

No doubt about it, the Argentinian artwork is stunning, and the film's locations are well chosen. The art makes me me think of Jessica Biel in Marcus Nispel's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake. And the heat of that memorable Texas day.

Clearly, director Adrian Garcia Bogliano is a fan of Texas. He even frames the girls' van similarly in an early scene. It's also an indication of what he was striving for. He does have the heat, and he does have the set-up, but the rotten aesthetics let the film down. Yes, the photography stinks. And I'm not saying that because it's video and low budget. It costs the same to shoot video well. You just need a director of photography who knows what they're doing.

Next time, I hope Mr. Bogliano will not allow the photography to compromise his vision. In an ideal world, it should enhance it.

***

The stills used in this piece are not frame grabs; the movie doesn't look this good.

The Reason of Rape

As a subject for "entertainment" (defined very broadly), RAPE leaves many male genre fans conflicted, which is surprising; not as surprising is that most women find the subject difficult.

The RAPE depicted in films is primarily against women by men. The directors of rape-themed cinema, with few exceptions (Lizzie Borden's Forced Entry), are men. For women, RAPE hits very close to home. If the statistics are accurate, a large majority of women have been a victim of RAPE or attempted rape.

To be fair, the stats about RAPE are up because the legal definition of the act has has been broadened.

When I was a kid, RAPE was non-consensual intercourse (vaginal). That made it pretty black and white. Now, RAPE, like ASSAULT, is the umbrella under which a plethora of acts reside.

"...unlawful sexual intrusion" has been added to the definition. That "intrusion" can be by body parts or objects. As a result, a woman can now be charged with RAPE. Before, it was impossible for a woman to have unlawful sexual intercourse with another woman or man because intercourse involved a penis. I'm not sure what they called a woman thrusting an object into another unwilling woman back then, but it wasn't RAPE.

The new definition attempts to encompass a multitude of acts. A lesser traumatic infraction (relatively speaking) now falls under the same general category as a more traumatic infraction. The lesser infraction gets taken seriously now because it's RAPE.

The law is somewhat lazy in its stated desire to be as inclusive as possible and gives lawyers plenty to argue about (how else do they make their money?)

If many women have been RAPED, it follows that many men have been doing the RAPING. I don't know any rapists myself, but I have known several women who have been victims. Perhaps it's fewer men committing multiple RAPES. Has to be.

My closest friends, who aren't RAPISTS, don't have a huge problem with RAPE-themed films. They've all known women who've been raped or assaulted, but they're smart enough to make the distinction between reality and film -- I started to write "fantasy", but the correct word is film. Film (as in: recorded image) and reality are two very separate beasts. Once you film something, it is no longer reality, it's a recording of reality. A perspective on reality. An angle. It's no longer pure. "Fantasy" can describe anything that isn't reality. It doesn't have to be set on Mars.

Guys I meet on the periphery of my existence sometimes exhibit a distaste for RAPE-themed films, a distaste that fascinates me. They will get very excited and enthusiastic about graphic, violent horror flicks such Hostel, Saw, Dawn of the Dead, and Dr. Butcher MD, but when the subject of RAPE rears its head in films like I Spit On Your Grave, Irreversible, and Yasuharu Hasebe's Raping!, their reaction is curious.

A recent reaction from a colleague to my statement that Irreversible is a favorite of mine, and that the RAPE scene is one of the best I've ever seen, was this: "I hated that scene. I just don't think there's any need for RAPE scenes."

Interesting.

Early on in the film, a man has his head bashed in with a fire extinguisher. Caved in, in fact. His head is obliterated. On-screen. It's very realistic. Beautifully done, actually. Prior to that, we got quick snippets of men masturbating, fucking each other, and wallowing in a world of consensual deviance. The fire extinguisher assault and murder are very impactful and confronting. But THAT didn't bother this guy. He didn't tell me that there wasn't any "need" for that.

I think using "need" to negate a subject is a cop-out because "need" is more closely associated with survival than hunger for art.

Do we "need" rape scenes? No.

Do we "need" scenes of graphic murder? No.

Do we "need" Law and Order? TMZ? Larry King? Tom Hanks' movies? Rom-Coms? The Weather Channel? Charles Dickens? Paris Hilton?

Not really. Not in the strictest biological sense.

Physically, we'd survive without them.

But do we need food?

Yes.

Air?

Yes.

Water?

Yes.

Sex?

Definitely.

These are basic needs. Accepted basic needs.

Imagine being told that you don't need food, or water... or sex.

Imagine being told that food is bad, water is evil, and sex is just plain wrong.

That'd be the recipe for a fucked-up world... but I disgress.

Gasper Noe's RAPE in Irreversible is a component of a film that sets out to shake us up -- some films do that. They do it with provocative imagery and sound. My judgment that it is a "Great Rape Scene" does not imply approval of the act. It communicate my appreciation and approval of what Noe achieved in terms of cinematic and psychological impact.

I don't feel guilty for loving Irreversible. Why should I?

I don't need it, but I like it.

I do find it interesting that MURDER is far more acceptable as "entertainment" (defined as that which moves me) than RAPE.

Perhaps it is even less acceptable to many people today because the definition has been broadened.

If a large number of women have been RAPED (with objects or body parts), the subject is close to home. And because RAPE, by definition, is not MURDER, those touched by RAPE are still with us.

MURDER is not so close to home because MURDERED PEOPLE are no longer with us. Their loved ones are, but the MURDERED PEOPLE themselves have passed.

I think this is why MURDER has gained greater acceptance in the entertainment sphere. It doesn't live next to us. It doesn't threaten us as RAPE can. There are even even comedies about MURDER.


I can't think of any comedies about RAPE. Japan's Rapeman (an eight part series of feature films) comes closest to tickling the subject. It's not a comedy, but it's about a modest superhero who uses RAPE as a legitimate weapon of commercial revenge.

The RAPE scenes are more erotic than brutal, and the commissioning client is often a woman.

As I said in my opening, I can understand why women have a problem with RAPE-themed movies, but the reaction of men is less comprehensible to me.

When you're watching MURDER on film, you know it's a put-on. When you're watching RAPE on film, you know it's a put-on, too. So why, Guys, the squirmy reaction to forced acts of sexual intrusion, but less squirminess about torture, beatings, heads blown off, intenstine-munching, breast mutilation, and endless psychological torment?

The Almighty Keepers Of Society's Morals (the most immoral lot you'll ever come across) have always found the mixing of sex and violence problematic. In countries like the UK and Australia, they argue that graphic images of sexual violence can encourage the act.

Really?

Yes, and they are convinced (despite unconvincing research) that such depictions can have a corrupting influence on some people. Not them, of course, but those "impressionable", socially disadvantaged people out there. You know, the poor, the uneducated, the masses who need to be protected from themselves.

In almost every Western country, hardcore pornography featuring fantasy depictions of RAPE is banned or deemed obscene. In the US, lawmakers are terrified of the idea, just as they are terrified of pornography featuring bodily fluids or serious S/M. If you produce this material, chances are you will be charged with Obscenity because the measuring stick is an old-fashioned, pile-of-shit moral barometer called "Community Standards" that assumes that your entire community watches said piece of material as a collective.

Ours is a society of guilt-driven denial and hideous double standards.

You can be thrown in jail for depicting a fantasy rape scene, but if you work in Hollywood and make films like Hostel and Saw that trade on aesthetically rich sequences of explicit torture and bodily mutilation, you're a legitimate filmmaker. And what you're depicting is definitely Not Obscene.

I have no problem with the latter (I've created some ultra-graphic horror content myself), but I have a big problem with the hypocrisy that lies between the two.

Not surprisingly, like everything, it does all comes down to sex, and the efforts of most religions to demonize the sexual act and anything sexual that occurs between two people not joined in the eyes of God.

It's a denial of reality, an attempt to strangle and illegitimize the greatest force on Earth that is a threat to the status quo of organized religion -- and its power to hold you in a grip built on bricks of solid snake oil.

And this brings me to my final point.

RAPE is an effective subject for drama because the act is the personification of human savagery. It is the expression of a primal impulse, the strongest impulse within man. Naturally, any exploration of it is sure to carry dramatic conflict and a strong element of fascination. We are addicted to portraits of our suppressed, primordial selves.

Whether you care to admit it or not, its depiction is erotically charged also because it involves a perversion of sexual intercourse.

It joins MURDER, BLOWING THINGS UP, and COLLIDING METAL as a provocateur of incendiary entertainment.

But RAPE in movies has about as much to do with real life as a happy ending.

So why, then, do women and some men have trouble separating RAPE in the movies from RAPE in the real world.

Shame.

Ever since I was a kid, I have never understood the shame associated with RAPE.

When a person is MURDERED, their name is published.

When a person is RAPED, their identity is usually obscured.

They enter a strange world of anonymity.

They are protected.

Protected from The Shame.

The Shame is a hold-over from an era when a RAPED woman was considered a bad woman. A loose woman.

It's a hold-over from an era when the world's rulers (men), like the Church now, were threatened by the sexuality of women. Threatened, but also inexplicably drawn to it.

So women got punished for possessing that power.

They were "dirty", "unclean", and "whores".

This attitude prevails and is expressed in the so-called "protection" of a rape victim's identity.

If society truly believed that RAPE was a crime against an innocent woman, it would be acceptable and desirable for a RAPE victim to have a voice, but a voice not diminished by an invisible shame.

Is it not the RAPIST who should feel the shame? Is it not the RAPIST who should feel humiliated?

The woman is the VICTIM of the RAPIST afterall.

No, the RAPIST may suffer a modicum of public humilation, but that's just a form of media revenge.

Suppressing a RAPED woman's identity is an admission that she has good reason to hide her face.

She's dirty.

No name. No identity. If you are RAPED, you become a non-person.

I'm not referring to situations in which men are falsely accused of RAPE by women who ought to be strung up for doing so. That's another discussion.

As a lover of RAPE-themed movies, I'm troubled about the unspoken expectation of shame that surrounds the status of a recently RAPED woman.

I'm convinced that this SHAME and AMBIGUITY are major parts of the reason why women and some men have trouble separating filmed RAPE from the complex physiology of real RAPE.

MURDER has black and white properties in terms of victim and assailant.

RAPE has multiple colors further clouded by religion's uneasy relationship with sex.

Having a passion for the vile and reprehensible nuggets of cinema hasn't robbed me of my capacity for empathy.

Quite the opposite.

Am I off my tree?

I welcome feedback from both genders.