Due to unforeseen circumstances at 3:AM Press with whom the publishing of Autofellatio was contracted - developments in a broad sense which were not connected to my book, or to me, we have decided to anull the contract. Therefore, I am going to serialise a few chapters online at a dedicated blog while I look for a literary agent and publishing house. Update to follow soon.
Philippe Grandrieux’s Sombre divided the judges at the Locarno Film Festival where it was first shown in 1998. It generated controversy and an official declaration on the part of the panel:
"Half of the jury would like to call attention to Sombre. Our jury split between those who were morally offended by the film and those who saw a purpose in its darkness, and in the strength of its mise-en-scene and images."
Grandrieux’s work encompasses several cinematographic areas: film, documentary, video art and experimental television. He is inspired by the early film theoretician Jean Epstein - whom Luis Buñuel once assisted - the German expressionism of Murnau, Robert Bresson and the Dutch philosopher Spinoza, a rationalist and ‘heretic’ who paved the way for the 18th century Enlightenment. Grandrieux has worked in close collaboration with the French Institut National de l’Audiovisuel (INA) since the 1980s: his mission is not simply to expand the boundaries of film, but rather to transform them. In challenging the central tenets of orthodox film theory, or philosophy even, he hopes to reinvent the language of film – and how we respond to it.
How so? Sombre, Grandrieux’s commercial film debut is a good example. The narrative of Sombre concerns a rather diffident serial killer in Jean (Marc Barbé) who roams the autoroutes of France to asphyxiate women. On one of his Michelin sorties he meets Claire (Elina Löwensohn) and appears to fall in love with her. She is infatuated by the seeming and powerful charisma of his remoteness, detachment and quietness. In truth, although his paraphilia and his murderousness gives him a certain exotic complexity he is, in fact, quite boring. Boring in the sense that his life-force and his energies hinge upon a singular, preoccupational theme: murder. As his next intended victim begins to fall in love with him it poses a real bluebottle in the Clarins dilemma for the serial killer, because the snuffing out of his prey is contingent upon objectifying them. Intimacy may only come during the final act. If it intrudes beforehand, the ‘act of communion’ which is the killer’s distorted expression of love and of power – his ‘transubstantiation’ - is null and voided. And that is the real theme here: transformation.
Grandrieux wishes to transform our perceptions through the experience of watching images on screen. Our experience. This is nothing new. Many a graduate film student who passes through the gates of Beaconsfield Film & Television School or the New York Film Academy harbours a similar ambition. Thank goodness some still do - because a majority are interested solely in commercial Hollywood filmmaking that will 'play' in Peoria, Illinois, whose box office receipts are calculated by nimble fingers that have never known nicotine. Thus, hopefully one is advanced to the sphere of the American Express Platinum Card and the comforting diesel-sonnet of Westinghouse airconditioning. Now, more than ever, it is all about money.
Transformation: Grandrieux is at the opposite end of the spectrum to the pop-corn ‘feel good factor’. The theme of his films orchestrate to visceral effect the rebirth of its protagonists through desires which have broken through the dams of compulsion - and the logical constraints of society - to achieve their end. Whether it is Jean or Claire in Sombre - a stygian, Gitanes-infused psychotic and dystopic love story - or the similarly doomed couple in his later film, La Vie Nouvelle which is a meditation on the desire that must incorporate personal ownership. The message is clear. Grandrieux is interested in cinema, but he is more interested in your ‘insides’. He wants to vibrate your kidneys, knot your intestines, short-circuit your sensory systems and return you to a realm that is like the unknowing, primordial fearfulness of childhood. He wants to radicalise and deliver the audience from being a passive voyeur – or someone who merely wishes only to be entertained - to becoming physically and psychologically involved by his films. The ‘explosions’ take place not only within the frame of the camera but, in his design, they expand and reach beyond the metaphysical constraints of the screen and head directly for your synapses. Depending on your reaction, this is either a search and destroy mission or a sensual love letter.
Grandrieux’s films are about sensuality, in the literal sense. He wants you to experience a cinematic orgasm. He wants to tickle your clitoris and your hippocampus - suspending you between a certain ecstasy and fear; to position you between apprehension, joy and ‘death’. Moreover, he wants your abandonment. The exquisite balance and the play of shadow and darkness that characterises his films reveals light as the essence. Light may only exist through the prism of darkness. The world is in a permanent solar eclipse. When light comes, it illuminates a small detail that gives you an important clue. The hymn of texture leads one to a conclusion. Grandrieux lingers, and he adores. This is all a form of lovemaking. Much of Sombre is slightly out of focus, and it was a deliberate treatment in transmitting the disorganised mind-set of its main character Jean, who may have seen the world in precisely that way. It can frustrate because you cannot always discern what exactly is happening. Sombre - which I first saw on the seventeenth floor of a Shepherd’s Bush high-rise flat while a midsummer Floridian gale rocked the building – succeeded in frightening me. The reason? Intimacy. Proximity. There are certain films that one should watch in a darkened room, by oneself. They are engineered to be viewed exactly under those circumstances. Cinema that is not meant to be seen at the cinema.
Grandrieux has been compared to David Lynch. The comparison is based on the idea that both directors believe that once a masterful mood is created - and where it is delicately sustained - by itself it is enough to carry a film. Narrative is a secondary consideration. I agree with this. Italian neo-realism prepared us for it. Sub-narrative can interrupt the flow of communication. In the 21st century where nothing really matters anymore, where there is no past nor future, and where we diligently update our status marquees on social networking sites – we may only be startled by effect. In cinema, atmosphere and mood may sometimes take precedence over story-telling. Narrative becomes irrelevant as the viewer is absorbed and reacts, consciously or subsconsciously to what he or she witnesses. In actuality, through cinema we ascertain a certain truth through dream, abstraction and in the decodifying of that which has passed through the retina and into the mind. It is a kind of plasma screen biblicalism.
Grandrieux has used sound design to great effect. Sound design is important. Soundscape is fundamental in shifting and pitching the mood of the viewer. It can move and unsettle you with its overtone; it precipitates and scores key moments; it contextualises and enrichens the experience. While Lynch creates his filmic dreams, blurring the division of the surreal and reality, reaching the digital-video apotheosis of Inland Empire - which is undoubtedly one of the best films made in the early 21st century – Grandrieux uses a similar technique but in an inverse sense. Physiognamy. It is not out there, it is within. It is all about you. Surrealism is now the refuge of those who are happy to endure ordinary life and and the repast of circumstantial television novellas. That is what surrealism has come to mean. We are now beyond surrealism.
It is ‘old hat’.
The largest question in this century might be "What is reality ?"
