Fando y Lis (1968)

In January 2019, a planned retrospective of the works of Alejandro Jodorowsky at New York City's El Museo del Barrio, a museum dedicated to Latin artists, was canceled by the venue, the reasoning being provocative comments Jodorowsky made in 1972 regarding shooting a scene depicting rape in his landmark acid western El Topo (1970). The cancellation of the retrospective, cowardly as it was, was all too predictable. A symptom of the pathetic and regressive sociopolitical climate, a period which should be judged harshly by legitimate historians for its anti-art, pro-censorship sentiments. Still, useful idiots are hardly in short supply, ready and willing to be gaslit and marched to the cultural gulag, erasing the works of important artists who were persecuted and at times even prosecuted for their work in the past, so while the canceling of the Jodorowsky retrospective is symptomatic of contemporary culture's failure, authoritarian censorship is ultimately a historical cockroach. In the case of Jodorowsky, the man certainly is a provocateur in the classic sense. The definition of a larger-than-life personality, Jodorowsky stunned unsuspecting audiences with films like El Topo and The Holy Mountain (1973), the outrageous films almost demanding a visceral reaction, so Jodorowsky hardly shied from controversy. This was made clear from the outset at the Acapulco Film Festival where Jodorowsky's overlooked debut feature Fando y Lis had its premiere and subsequently caused a riot to break out.

The roots of Fando y (and) Lis can be traced back to the Panic Movment, an surrealist ensamble formed by Jodorowsky along with Fernando Arrabal, director of Viva la muerte (1971) and I Will Walk Like a Crazy Horse (1973) and chameleon creative Roland Topor, author of The Tenant, later adapted by Roman Polanski in 1976. Originally a play by Arrabal, Fando y Lis, a “Panic film”, has often been described as having been shot with only Jodo's “hazy memories” of Arrabal's play, though the general idea remains the same, that of Lis, a paraplegic and her boyfriend Fando traversing an imposing landscape searching for Tar, a mythical city, encountering a plethora of bizarre characters along the way.

Given that the film was constructed with Jodorowsky working only from his own memories of Arrabal's play, which was keeping with Panic ethos, Fando y Lis the most loose feeling of Jodorowsky's films, playing out very much like titular characters trek to Tar, a strange, random and at times painful, yet unforgettable journey. It's fitting that the Panic Movement was influenced by Henry Becque's Theater of Cruelty, later pioneered by Antonin Artaud, as despite the mythical paradise that is supposed to be Tar, Fando and Lis' journey is fraught with the cruelty of the real world Tar is an escape too. This is perhaps best represented by the change in Fando's treatment of Lis throughout the film. At first loving and care-giving, promising Lis eternal happiness once they reach Tar and pushing and carrying her around everywhere, Fando eventually turns cruel and violent. Lis is a tragic character from the start, with a past trauma being presented by Jorodowsky in a brilliantly realized moment of surreal horror, the multiple religious and spiritual interpretations of the film make it seem as if Lis is a saintly figure of sorts, destined for greater things while suffering a life of torments. The landscape of the duo's journey is also harsh, a desert wasteland that brings with it an ambiance of its own, Jodorowsky also brings out the beauty inherent in the landscape, shooting the film in high contrast black and white using the locations as a backdrop for a barrage of jaw-dropping surreal imagery and scenarios.

Like so many other places around the globe, Mexico in 1968 was in a period of intense civil unrest and social uprising. With large student movements and major protests against the Olympics taking place in Mexico City with the Mexican government spending massive amounts of public funds on the games which would lead to the massacre of many demonstrators, the atmosphere was highly charged when Fando y Lis premiered at Acapulco Film Festival. Unsurprisingly, following the films riotous reception, the film was banned in Mexico. It's damn near impossible not to draw parallels between Fando y Lis and another maverick feature film debut, Jean Rollin's The Rape of the Vampire (1968) which also premiered in the midst of high tensions, tensions which eventually shut down the Cannes Film Festival, and caused an already on-edge audience to physically revolt against the film. Fast-forward to 2019, and while having a museum exhibit canceled might seem like small potatoes compared to causing a riot, it's nevertheless a prime example of the well-worn adage “the more things change the more they stay the same”. Over fifty years after his first feature film was banned and Jodorowsky's work once again found itself hidden from public view because of things he said over forty years ago, which only proves once again that Jodorowsky's work possesses a quality that transcends time. It challenges repressive dogma. We're lucky to have him.

Love (2015)

One of the most exciting filmmakers to emerge during the resurgence of boundary-pushing cinema in the 90's and early 2000's, Gaspar Noé is both celebrated and dismissed for his confrontational and provocative works like I Stand Alone (1998) and Irreversible (2002). Noé's films have become synonymous with many things, but if there's one descriptor that could accurately be attributed to each of his films, it would be “intimate”. Though referring to a visceral gut-punch like Irreversible as “intimate” will no doubt have some gasping in horror, intimacy is most commonly associated with closeness and that's exactly what Noé does, gets up close and extremely personal, often in unpleasant scenarios. I Stand Alone, Noé's first feature and companion to his earlier short film Carne (1991) earns the tag with the nearly non-stop interior monologue of The Butcher driving the film, something Noé would take even further in Enter the Void (2009) by literally going inside the head of it's main character Oscar, having the entire film play out in first person. Irreversible may focus on multiple characters, but Noé's presentation of a night out gone horribly wrong in reverse order is unflinching. Noé's third feature, Love, is perhaps his most intimate yet. Just as challenging as his other works albeit in a slightly different way, the film is also Noé's most underrated and one of the most accurate and affecting portrayals of a relationship gone wrong.

Murphy, an American filmmaker living in Paris with Omi, the mother of their young sun Gaspar, wakes on New Years morning to a voicemail from the mother of his ex-girlfriend Electra asking if he knows her whereabouts as she's been missing for months and was feeling suicidal prior to her disappearance. Having never gotten over his tumultuous split with Electra, caused by his impregnating of Omi who was their neighbor at the time, Murphy is extremely concerned about Electra's well-being and after taking some opium he'd been saving given to him by Electra, Murphy reflects back on his impassioned romance with Electra while lamenting his current life situation.

Considering what came before it, Love probably seems downright subdued and to a certain extent it is, with Noé trading visceral, physical violence for emotional turmoil and a much more calm filming technique following the hand-held mania of Irreversible and innovative acrobatics of Enter the Void, but it would be hard to mistake Love for the work of another filmmaker. Returning to the first-person narration of I Stand Alone, one of the most common criticisms of the film is Murphy's unlikability which is funny seeing as Noé has him repeatedly criticize himself during his voice-overs, referring to himself as a literal “dick” and owning up to his past mistakes which led to his current unhappiness. Noé is also once again playing with time, but rather than have the film play out in reverse like in Irreversible, Noé scrambles the entire timeline of Murphy and Electra's romance with an approach that is similar to Nicolas Roeg or Atom Egoyan. Much like Irreversible, this approach to time works in the films favor, giving the flashbacks to the happier moments between Murphy and Electra added weight and making the final moments of the film incredibly powerful. It's also appropriate that opium is is the catalyst for Murphy's flashbacks. Just like DMT was the influence behind Enter the Void's metaphysical head trip, Love plays out like an opium induced stream of regrets, very slow and ponderous with the scenes of the early stages of Murphy and Electra's romance representing blissful high with the inevitable crash being debilitating.

Much like Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac (2013), Love was another film featuring unsimulated sex scenes not regulated to the adult marketplace and predictably that aspect of the film became the most talked about during it's per-release hype phase and after the fact. A bit surprising, seeing as Noé had used hardcore in the past with a scene in I Stand Alone featuring a clip of a hardcore adult film and Noé's short We Fuck Alone (2006) was part of the Destricted (2006) series of shorts which explored the seemingly eternal art/pornography question. Noé was also inspired to use Erik Satie on the soundtrack for Love by the use of Satie music in Stephen Sayadian and Francis Delia's Nightdreams (1981), a landmark adult film. One of the more unusual things regarding the film is Noé's choice to shoot the film in 3D, hence “Love 3D” moniker on some posters, which does seem a bit mischievous when the format had become cliché for mega-budget blockbusters, though one scene in particular really stands out and it's fairly obvious why Noé would shoot something like it in 3D. With the brilliant Climax (2018) added to his oeuvre, Love holds an interesting place in Noé's filmography and whether viewed in 2D or 3D, Love shows a slightly different side of Noé while still retaining his distinct personality and like all of Noé's films, will cause a strong reaction.