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The James
This is not a movie of titillation nor sensationalism. It is a genuine story, decidedly a work of art. The lesbianism simply is; it exists independently of, and indifferent to, everything else, as life does. That is all you can say about it. The characters in this screenplay are their own persons, living their own lives, in what seems a very foreign place, which is home to them. The Painter is a lesbian. She lives her life in Paris, oblivious to you, the viewer, and she is not posturing for the audience, if that’s what you are looking for. You won’t find it here. If the protagonist, The Painter, doesn’t fit into the usual clichéd girl/girl image you were expecting, that’s because she is not supposed to. She does not exist for the pleasure of the male viewer. She exists in and of herself. The men in this production represent obstacles and threats to the women. She meets a woman, a night club singer, who is actually heterosexual, called simply “The Girl”. After struggling with the usual conflicts about a same-sex relationship with the painter, the girl relents to her feelings and dives headlong into an intimate, loving relationship with the painter. Still the girl is not quite sure what she wants. The complication is “The Man”, a brutal abusive person who owns the club where she is employed, and his goons. The man does not want the painter interfering with his exploitation of the girl, and some violence ensues. The portrayal of same is disturbing but not graphic. Like everything else in the behavior of these characters, the pain and anger of the girl and the painter are deeply felt by the viewer. The videography is exceptionally clean and pure, the choice of camera viewpoints quite Spartan and original. What the camera does not see is as important to the director’s statement as what it does. The soundtrack, the jazz, are perfect for this mood, this genre. The narration and point of view are deliberately spare and poetic, like the notations in a heavy, large-format book of art plates. Since the dialogue is so measured it pays to follow the words carefully. There is no waste here. The painting scenes with the French actress Agathe De La Boulaye, who portrays the painter, are extremely natural, realistic, and entirely believable. This was done very, very well. The director deliberately avoids turning the film into a travelogue of Paris landmarks. What is shown is what is necessary to the story. The cinematography is gorgeous. The scenes sparkle. The locations, such as the outside of the club, the interior of the hotel, the painter’s loft, and the rest, come off like paintings themselves. There are love scenes between the women, but they are not staged and directed to arouse, but merely to inform the viewer of the progress of their affair. They are for the most part abstract, which the director, in her commentary, states was her intention. The viewers really do feel as if they are peeking into the very private lives of these women, and the director did well to shrink back when necessary. Going any further would have been too intrusive and damaged the project. The camera shows what is necessary to move the story along, nothing more, nothing less. The symbolism is subtle but ever present. Who/what does the painters model and lover, the black woman, Bu Save, represent? What of The Girl? The Seine? The Man? You can spend hours, days, years going deep, deep inside this movie. This production is based upon a novella by the French feminist, writer and philosopher Monique Wittig, PhD., Professor of Women's Studies and French at the University of Arizona. It would be extremely arrogant for someone from a completely different culture, and more importantly, a radically different upbringing and pulled-together value system, to go in assuming that this story and movie are going to be as immediately accessible to them as the average girl-on-girl feature created to cater to the typical male’s perception of women loving women. It is not anything like that. Additionally, if you prefer your entertainment of the kind which can be neatly wrapped up in a single Hollywood “high concept” paragraph, you will go away from this unsatisfied. The French philosophers have a familiar relationship with life’s dualities and contradictions. For them the act of knowing, of sorting out, untangling, is the thing. They don’t expect life’s mysteries to be handed to them, laid out for inspection and consumption like a serving of fast food. They can live with what isn’t ever going to be knowable, and invent a new way of writing and speaking to describe it and enjoy the pursuit of it anyway. Ms. Wittig’s ideas are hard to get in any case; as a man, they might be forever out of reach to me. I can still appreciate the great effort and care lavished upon this production by the director Sande Zeig, though. Ms. Zeig is one of our most talented filmmakers. When you look at something you change it. The painter gets what she is creating by looking, looking more clearly and perceptively at the world than those who do not want to feel that deeply. She knows how elusive reality is, how our feelings are a choice, how nothing exists until we think it, know it. That one’s choice of words, and the words our thoughts use, determine what the world becomes for us. If you want to know what the movie is “about”, if you want the “plot”, well, that is given to you in a few paragraphs on the package sleeve. But that is only the jumping off point. If you want to know what it is about for you, you will have to view it, and watch it come alive, specifically for you. And then it will be different for you than for anyone else. 99.9% of movies are no more than shadows. This kind of movie is a mirror, an experience. If it makes you at all uncomfortable, then it’s working. You can take what you get here out into the world, and it might reveal something to you about that world, and yourself, you have never considered before. That’s what “The Girl” is really about. ========== The reviewer majored in Philosophy and based his concluding thesis on the literature and essays of the renowned Existential philosopher, John-Paul Sartre.
Clion
Now this movie is a really nice surprise. What you have here in an intensely erotic film noir movie about two women in love: one an naive artist the other a bad but tempting cabaret singer. Sure, you just know that the artist is, at the end of the movie, going to get her heart broken; but on the way to that ending, we are treated to an intensely erotic experience. The scenes between the two women are plentiful and hot. Done mainly in close-ups, with only the sounds of their lovemaking to be heard, the sight of their bodies moving together and the expressions on their faces make their scenes the hottest ever. This one should get five stars.
Femfootman
Let me sum up my feelings about this video like this; If you are more comfortable watching a lesbian-centric film-noir in a cinematic "art-house" type venue rather than the variety that would be shown at the local XXX movie theatre (remember those) then you'll probably enjoy this video. Unfortunately I prefer the latter and therefore did not particularly like this offering. A big drawback for me aside from the lack of sexual explicitness was that there was no semblance of a pursuit. You know that very sensual cat & mouse game that woman play with one another before jumping into bed with one another does not show up here in the storyline. It all begins so rather suddenly at the start, The Artist & Singer exchange an extremely quick glance and then boom they are seen in bed with one another (after the loving), no chance for any sexy build-up between the two. In fact speed and quickness is the operative filming style throughout the video. A case in point, I thought that one of if not the most erotic moment was where the Singer leaned the Artist up against the wall and started to grind against her asking between tender kisses whether she had ever made love standing up. However instead of allowing the scene to fully develop we were taken away to another scene and this occurred time and again throughout the video. Well, buyer beware I guess, I knew before hand that I was taking a chance on this one I just did not think that my disappointment barometer would register so high however.
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