Reviews

First thing, this movie will certainly not be pleasant to most viewers. Even those who will like it (if they are any) or those who will find something interesting in it will still be left in a state of disorientation (and disgust). Contrary to many comments seen around, I really think one can make sense of this film. It helps to know that it was inspired, in part, buy W. Reich's psychology. This film aims at pushing to its limits the boundaries of the two world views (Weltanschauung) that dominated intellectual life in the 1970's western world: the bourgeois capitalist society and its anti-thesis named communism which is here presented bluntly in text and song or through the romantic experience of a commune (although the commune is everything but romantic!). The two women, who hold the narrative together, present each one of these world views. They reject both the conformism of bourgeois society (well, it is not totally conformist in this movie but I'll let you find out…) and the rigidity of communism. The bourgeois (the first woman's husband) is obsessed by cleanliness, has very bad knowledge of history (or reality?) and is incapable of sexually satisfying his wife (or rather his ways of satisfying them are not up to her standards – or any one else's by the way!). The commune members are obsessed with bodily fluids (all of them! which in a certain way, they share with the bourgeois), transgressing bourgeois values (showing that abundance often – if not always - makes you sick) and sexualizing every aspect of life. One of the key moments in the film is when the bourgeois woman leaves capitalism (exposed metaphorically through, for example, a game show and a helicopter ride over Niagara Falls). After a trip to Paris in a briefcase, she enters a commune in which she is incapable of feeling at ease as her new «friends» indulge in eccentricities for which she would not have imagined (or, analytically speaking, going back to them). The same thing happens albeit differently to the woman from a communist country. Travelling the world in a Marxist boat (that is a boat which has a huge head of Karl Marx on the front) she enters – almost dreamlike - a society of abundance metaphorically shown by the boat being full of sugar and candies. If the capitalist woman left her world for its antitheses – a commune - and stays incapable of satisfying her sexual desires (take note that she always seem to go back to were she came from although with different people and situations) – the communist one needs to seduce revolutionaries and pre-teens for that (she is sexually satisfied though – or so we are left to believe). But, in the end, she has to kill all who are seduced (does she have to destroy what gives her satisfaction?). The movie ends in a certain synthesis of those world views, as we see our capitalist woman sexually satisfying herself in a bath full of chocolate for television (again, she returns to were she started – on television). This movie, it seems to me at least, is much about creating discomfort in the viewer (maybe in a slightly Brechtian way, though without breaking the fourth wall, but certainly by creating discomfort). It also criticizes both capitalism and communism, nothing is left intact it seems. They are no clear winners. That is one of the reasons for which it is not for everybody. Yes, they are lots of graphic scenes which will, to say the least, shock most people, but those who limit their commentary to those scenes seem to miss the point completely. What will destabilize most viewers is that after all of this (and I haven't written about everything that we see), it does not try to answer any questions. What in the end is good or bad, Capitalism or Communism? I'm not saying this movie is great, but it got me thinking a lot. In such, this makes viewing it possibly rewarding (even if some of the scenes are really disgusting and others are plain silly). And depending on your sense of humour, you can get a good laugh at it - it got me laughing more than once.