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Film Description
A challenging but compassionate film in which Tiresia is a Brazilian transexual living with her brother in the outskirts of Paris. A man's obsession with her leads him to kidnapping her. However, without her regular dose of hormones, Tiresia starts to change back to a male.
In this modern day, Palme d'Or nominated re-telling of the Greek mythology of Tiresias, Bertrand Bonello (established art-porn director whom you might know from The Po... more >
In this modern day, Palme d'Or nominated re-telling of the Greek mythology of Tiresias, Bertrand Bonello (established art-porn director whom you might know from The Pornographer) does an excellent job at putting form and function together in an engaging story of nature, beauty, deviance and redemption. The diverse imagery employed by Bonello is at times mind-bending and I can only hope to think I have got it right.
This is not a comfortable film by any standard. The visuals range from the suspiciously calm to the explicitly obscene but you never feel for one moment that it is aggresive or that it is done for shock value. From the very outset, we see transvestite/transsexual (I still don't know the difference!) Brazillian prostitutes parading their goods to customers on a street with slow-passing cars. The antagonist character goes out and kidnaps himself one of the whores because she was singing a strange song on her own. He doesn't rape her, doesn't have sex with her and pretty much just watches her as she is locked in a room. In time, she begins to re-develop her masculine features without her supply of hormone pills. Some tense dialogue ensue and you can be certain you would be drawn completely into the film by now once the two get involved in an unhealthy and dark non-relationship.
I can tell you that the film will get brutal but there's no need for
that. Neither is it necessary to elaborate on the story either. This is an art film. Plot is secondary to execution. The execution here is brilliant. I will tell you however that the Tiresias myth is about a man who turns into a woman and turns back into a man (or at least that is what I read anyway) because of some snake-killing act and some Zeus-Hera dispute. One account is that because Tiresias was both fully man and fully woman, he was asked by Hera and Zeus as to who had more pleasure during sex. Hera was angry that Tiresias' reply was that women had more pleasure (9 times more apparently! I knew it!) so he was struck blind. Not being able to undo the curse, Zeus bestowed the power of prophecy on Tiresias. The film runs in much the same way in concept. Although it is set in Paris it might as well be anywhere because the exclusiveness and alienation of the characters are key to the story.
Rated 18 with the full frontal shots, this masterpiece is low on
dialogue and quite meditative especially towards the end so it is obviously not for your average War Of The Worlds movie fan. If you have read this far what I've wrote, you're probably not one!
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