This IS a serious film. If you get past the gay porn and the expectation that this will be some zombie thriller (stumbling blocks that seem to have gotten in the way of many of the reviewers here), then it becomes quite clear that this is NOT primarily a gay politics film, and NOT a thriller.
For me, the relevance of this film comes through with full reference to Lacan and Zizek, who both discuss the different types of desire/drive that motivate the human subject. Most of us are stuck in the subjectivity of desire, pursuing our love objects--and losing them--but always in the grip of the idea that somehow we can have IT. The subject of desire is always motivated by 'lack' and the attempt to fill in the lack; but the subject of drive is motivated by excess and the weariness of always having 'too much'.
In the film, Otto had IT, but as is clear in the scene when he re-meets his old love, the guy really wasn't all that worth it. But this does not lead Otto to attempt to replace his lost love; instead he has the realization that his lost love is infinitely replaceable by any of the clones out there pursuing mindless connections. The scene with his lost love comes late in the film, but it suggests that some structural aspects of it were behind Otto's becoming a zombie in the first place. There is a realization that leads Otto to lose his 'desire' and become a zombie--he lives with the curse that the object of his desire is endlessly repeatable--he is condemned always to having this realization, which essentially makes him neither alive nor dead.
The end of the film suggests that Otto achieves a different kind of jouissance than that merely had by the 'subject of drive'--but it is only a suggestion, and Labruce goes no further with it than that. This is where I think the film falls short: it is an excellent expose of the emptiness of desire and of the flatness of desire's corollary, drive. But the film does not satisfactorily navigate what lies beyond the desire/drive deadlock.
Nevertheless, this film is far beyond most film-schlock of the moment that never even rises to a decent consciousness of the chains of desire. It is a great exploration of the subjectivity of displacement and intimates that that is an aspect of ALL of our understandings, whether we perceive it or not. I agree with the reviewer who calls this an "entirely original work of art."
For me, the relevance of this film comes through with full reference to Lacan and Zizek, who both discuss the different types of desire/drive that motivate the human subject. Most of us are stuck in the subjectivity of desire, pursuing our love objects--and losing them--but always in the grip of the idea that somehow we can have IT. The subject of desire is always motivated by 'lack' and the attempt to fill in the lack; but the subject of drive is motivated by excess and the weariness of always having 'too much'.
In the film, Otto had IT, but as is clear in the scene when he re-meets his old love, the guy really wasn't all that worth it. But this does not lead Otto to attempt to replace his lost love; instead he has the realization that his lost love is infinitely replaceable by any of the clones out there pursuing mindless connections. The scene with his lost love comes late in the film, but it suggests that some structural aspects of it were behind Otto's becoming a zombie in the first place. There is a realization that leads Otto to lose his 'desire' and become a zombie--he lives with the curse that the object of his desire is endlessly repeatable--he is condemned always to having this realization, which essentially makes him neither alive nor dead.
The end of the film suggests that Otto achieves a different kind of jouissance than that merely had by the 'subject of drive'--but it is only a suggestion, and Labruce goes no further with it than that. This is where I think the film falls short: it is an excellent expose of the emptiness of desire and of the flatness of desire's corollary, drive. But the film does not satisfactorily navigate what lies beyond the desire/drive deadlock.
Nevertheless, this film is far beyond most film-schlock of the moment that never even rises to a decent consciousness of the chains of desire. It is a great exploration of the subjectivity of displacement and intimates that that is an aspect of ALL of our understandings, whether we perceive it or not. I agree with the reviewer who calls this an "entirely original work of art."