Conspirators of Pleasure (Jan Svankmajer) 1997
Jan Svankmajer’s
Conspirators of Pleasure is so
original that it is difficult to place in context with regards to other films.
It looks like an either an extended version of the bedspring scene in Delicatessan
or a very long Björk video. It
utilizes the same sort of stop-motion animation seen in the films of the
Brothers Quay or Wladyslaw Starewicz (The
Tale of the Fox, The Mascot). Its subject matter, which surreally examines
sexual repression and fetishism, feels positively Buñuelian. Svankmajer’s
work doesn’t often feel derivative, however. His strong ability to tell a
story visually (Conspirators requires
absolutely no subtitles to watch despite the fact that it’s in Czech) and his
nonchalant way of raising issues and lecturing to the audience about their
foibles through exaggeration and bawdiness make this film feel like it’s been
cast in the style of a newspaper’s political cartoon.
Conspirators
follows about a half-dozen people as they elaborately and secretly plan out
their fetishistic sex rituals. None of the sex acts are really erotic or
plausible enough to make the audience feel the director is singling them out or
expecting them to be titillated, but there is, for the audience, a real sense of
identification with the alienation these characters’ desires cause. The
participants are never shown discussing their needs (which are literally hidden
“in the closet”), but there are some knowing glances between characters
exchanged suggesting a mutual understanding. Like the hero of Before
Night Falls their sexual deviancy is nearly a form of political rebellion,
and unifies them in the face of their society’s oppression. The film is also
smart enough to suggest sexual desire is malleable and fetishes aren’t as
distinctly ours as we might think they are. That it’s able to convey so much
about sexuality and perversity with a minimum amount of either nudity or erotic
charge is impressive, though one might wish these acts, which are obviously
hugely enjoyable for their perpetrators, might be more fun for us. They’re
certainly funny and odd, but we’re always looking at them from an outsider’s
perspective.
The implication
seems to be that we’re all harboring shames about our sexuality is a little
problematic. Obviously, the film means this in a Buñuelian sense, which would
suggest that without religion and manners we’d all be engaging in a nonstop
orgy, but even that seems too neatly conceptualized. The fact of the matter is
that humans tend to process sexual desires differently, and Conspirators
wants us to think that we’re not at all different simply because we all have
sexual desires. Some of us opt to act on impulse, while others don’t, so the
film probably would have been better if it had examined what differentiated
those who do and don’t act. The end of the movie, which hints that it might go
in that direction, is fascinating, but it merely introduces the concept, and
drops it. Still, it’s a must-see, if only because of the wealth of imagination
and the technical bravado. The film’s handmade look fits the material, since
it’s about desires too personal to be mass-produced. Conspirators
of Pleasure manages to stave off the repetitiousness that its specificity
might have caused by keeping its running time under 90 minutes. Thankfully, the
film’s more edifying moments are surrounded by a thoroughly enjoyable shell of
quirky insanity.
*** 1/2
Jeremy Heilman
12-19-01
