I've been on some kind of journey through exploitation films lately, which I've never really watched, but because I love gothic horror, Ive been trying to get a sense of what the actual substance of the movement is. This was definitely marketed as softcore, but I saw a kind of potential for poetry, so I gave it a watch. I think this is a hidden gem.
Dreams about men on horses is associated with sexual awakening, so that's a pretty straightforward allusion. I loved the added element of Chico, the man in the horse, living in the reeds, emerging unexpectedly and fading away again. Triana both searches for him and avoids him. The reeds are her confusion about who she is and who she wants to be.
Every night she dreams of Chico. In her dreams she herself might be a horse, waiting for him to be her master. She's trapped in the expectations of what she has seen between men and women. If she admits to her feelings for Chico, will she lose herself and become just another victim of heteronormative societal norms? Will she be a person with a voice and agency? She wants freedom and her own choices, but she has no idea how to find that. Lorna even chides her for not wanting to learn how to read, because she knows that would help her in her self discovery, but she refuses to learn.
Chico and Tiana are both from the same band of Roma, so their culture and traditions play a part here as well. Tiana talks about how Chico just wants to take things, the implication being that she doesn't want to be one of those things.
Chico is uneducated and inarticulate, so instead of trying to talk to Tiana about his feelings, he keeps assaulting her. His relationship with his horse is the best one he has at that point, so he thinks if he can break Triana the way he did his horse, then once she trusts him, he can show her the same tenderness and trust in that relationship. On the one hand, yuck, but on the other, it's all he knows. Triana keeps searching him out and wanting to know where he is, but once finding him, fleeing from him.
She falls for Lorna as much because the idea of living the life of an independently wealthy woman who can spend her time enjoying and creating art is a beautiful dream as it is about her attraction to her. It seems to me like she thinks if she can keep Lorna happy, she can keep Chico away and escape her fate. She's essentially told this by a fortune teller she seeks out for guidance. She is determined to fight to stay with Lorna and be this new version of herself that's so enticing. But humans can't live in an ideal for long without it collapsing, and she doesn't realize that Lorna's life is an illusion based on its own power structure of master and the broken.
Lorna gets bored and is intrigued by Chico, and even after Tiana says that he has attempted to rape her on several occasions, she invites him into their home and dismisses Tiana's concerns as silly. It takes awhile for Tiana to realize that Lorna will always be bored and always look for people to fill that excitement for her. Chico and Tiana aren't people, they are pleasurable pass times. Lorna spends her days drinking and sun bathing while Tiana scrubs the floors. Their relationship is not at all equal and the more Lorna sees that she has successfully trapped Tiana, the more emotionally withholding and verbally cruel she becomes.
Tiana is able to touch Chico and kiss him between the buffer of a threesome. They both act like they are focused on Lorna, but are clearly focused on each other. This very much seems like an allusion to the mental gymnastics a lot of women do trying to sort out their sexual desires from their rational goals for their lives. Tiana says she hates Chico and wants to kill him, but in this scene we see how incredibly at ease she is around him. He sees this, and starts to focus on Lorna, who he enjoys having sex with, but is a conduit to showing Tiana his true feelings.
During a later tryst, Lorna seeks Chico out in the tall reeds where he has made a home. After the coitus having, she tells Chico he should tell Tiana his feelings instead of just trying to sexually dominate her as if she was a horse. He says this is stupid and talks about how he isn't a man of planning but of instinct. Ironically, in the next scene Tiana shoots Lorna dead, acting out of her own primal instinct. Lorna wondered into Tiana's territory without permission, and instinctually Tiana cannot allow this. The illusion of Lorna is shattered, but now she feels more lost.
Chico finds Tiana at the house, and heading Lorna's advice, finally tells Tiana his feelings for her, how he's loved her since he first saw her. At this confession, Tiana sees that Chico doesn't want to be her master, but her partner. He says he doesn't care about any of Lorna's trappings, he just wants to be with her. Together they hide the body. Tiana throws the necklace Lorna gave her into the marsh water at the edge of the reeds, and with her own agency, joins Chico on his horse as they go to the next part if their journey together and on equal terms.
If this had been made and marketed in a different way, I think it would be up there with the likes of Jane Campions The Piano, or even Remains of the Day, where you have all this unspoken tension between desire and obligation. How we hide our true selves in societal norms but somehow they peak out during sex because of how it necessitates connection with our prereflective self.
If you like existential kind of poetic journeys of self discovery, try this out. If you want some sexploitation, you'll be disappointed by its cerebral subtlety.
Dreams about men on horses is associated with sexual awakening, so that's a pretty straightforward allusion. I loved the added element of Chico, the man in the horse, living in the reeds, emerging unexpectedly and fading away again. Triana both searches for him and avoids him. The reeds are her confusion about who she is and who she wants to be.
Every night she dreams of Chico. In her dreams she herself might be a horse, waiting for him to be her master. She's trapped in the expectations of what she has seen between men and women. If she admits to her feelings for Chico, will she lose herself and become just another victim of heteronormative societal norms? Will she be a person with a voice and agency? She wants freedom and her own choices, but she has no idea how to find that. Lorna even chides her for not wanting to learn how to read, because she knows that would help her in her self discovery, but she refuses to learn.
Chico and Tiana are both from the same band of Roma, so their culture and traditions play a part here as well. Tiana talks about how Chico just wants to take things, the implication being that she doesn't want to be one of those things.
Chico is uneducated and inarticulate, so instead of trying to talk to Tiana about his feelings, he keeps assaulting her. His relationship with his horse is the best one he has at that point, so he thinks if he can break Triana the way he did his horse, then once she trusts him, he can show her the same tenderness and trust in that relationship. On the one hand, yuck, but on the other, it's all he knows. Triana keeps searching him out and wanting to know where he is, but once finding him, fleeing from him.
She falls for Lorna as much because the idea of living the life of an independently wealthy woman who can spend her time enjoying and creating art is a beautiful dream as it is about her attraction to her. It seems to me like she thinks if she can keep Lorna happy, she can keep Chico away and escape her fate. She's essentially told this by a fortune teller she seeks out for guidance. She is determined to fight to stay with Lorna and be this new version of herself that's so enticing. But humans can't live in an ideal for long without it collapsing, and she doesn't realize that Lorna's life is an illusion based on its own power structure of master and the broken.
Lorna gets bored and is intrigued by Chico, and even after Tiana says that he has attempted to rape her on several occasions, she invites him into their home and dismisses Tiana's concerns as silly. It takes awhile for Tiana to realize that Lorna will always be bored and always look for people to fill that excitement for her. Chico and Tiana aren't people, they are pleasurable pass times. Lorna spends her days drinking and sun bathing while Tiana scrubs the floors. Their relationship is not at all equal and the more Lorna sees that she has successfully trapped Tiana, the more emotionally withholding and verbally cruel she becomes.
Tiana is able to touch Chico and kiss him between the buffer of a threesome. They both act like they are focused on Lorna, but are clearly focused on each other. This very much seems like an allusion to the mental gymnastics a lot of women do trying to sort out their sexual desires from their rational goals for their lives. Tiana says she hates Chico and wants to kill him, but in this scene we see how incredibly at ease she is around him. He sees this, and starts to focus on Lorna, who he enjoys having sex with, but is a conduit to showing Tiana his true feelings.
During a later tryst, Lorna seeks Chico out in the tall reeds where he has made a home. After the coitus having, she tells Chico he should tell Tiana his feelings instead of just trying to sexually dominate her as if she was a horse. He says this is stupid and talks about how he isn't a man of planning but of instinct. Ironically, in the next scene Tiana shoots Lorna dead, acting out of her own primal instinct. Lorna wondered into Tiana's territory without permission, and instinctually Tiana cannot allow this. The illusion of Lorna is shattered, but now she feels more lost.
Chico finds Tiana at the house, and heading Lorna's advice, finally tells Tiana his feelings for her, how he's loved her since he first saw her. At this confession, Tiana sees that Chico doesn't want to be her master, but her partner. He says he doesn't care about any of Lorna's trappings, he just wants to be with her. Together they hide the body. Tiana throws the necklace Lorna gave her into the marsh water at the edge of the reeds, and with her own agency, joins Chico on his horse as they go to the next part if their journey together and on equal terms.
If this had been made and marketed in a different way, I think it would be up there with the likes of Jane Campions The Piano, or even Remains of the Day, where you have all this unspoken tension between desire and obligation. How we hide our true selves in societal norms but somehow they peak out during sex because of how it necessitates connection with our prereflective self.
If you like existential kind of poetic journeys of self discovery, try this out. If you want some sexploitation, you'll be disappointed by its cerebral subtlety.