Gradiva [Import]

This was an interesting French film shot in Morocco. From what I'm coming to learn as an ignorant American is that the French certainly appreciate erotic cinema, and this movie is no exception. In fact, the movie is primarily concerned with a more underground type of eroticism, looking at Arab/Moroccan sex slaves, torture (lightly), etc. The movie also explores a Frenchman investigating Delacroix (sp?) and his experiences in Morocco and a legendary French woman who may or may not have been his lover, who may or may not have been executed by Moroccans, and, further, who may or may not be a ghost haunting the Moroccan streets. Largely, that story takes a very backseat to the movie's visual displays of the ribald, which are, for the most part, very well done. There are strong atmospheric elements, with good camera work, lighting, scene composition, etc. The acting is at least passably good too. Overall, its really not about any particular story, but is an interesting visual evolution for the eyes, considering the great Moroccan visuals, the perverse eroticism, etc. A recommended rental for sure.

This film is a sado-erotic masterpiece from a master of sado-eroticism (Allain Robbe-Grillet). It is not for everyone. If you have not explored alternate sexuality, it is not a film for you.

I didn't understand this film before reading the info in the special features. There are many erotic BDSM scenes with attractive actresses. On its face, the film might appear to be exploitative and gratuitously sado-masochistic.

However, on reading the commentary by the director (Allain Robbe-Grillet), the film came into focus as an art film exploring the deep taboos of our unconscious.

It is a film with a long history of predecessors in French cinema. Grillet (died in 2008) is a noted French author and director. Little known is that his wife, Catherine Robbe-Grillet, was also an esteemed author of French sado-masochistic literature. Under the name of Jean de Berg, she authored a book in the 1960's entitled: "The Image." It was quickly made into a French sado-erotic film. The Image ("The Punishment of Anne") The film was directed by the art-house pioneer Radly Metzger. Metzger, an American Veteran of war film documentaries for the Army, was making tasteful Therese and Isabelle art films about alternate sexuality in the 1950's and 1960's. The Radley Metzger Collection, Vol. 1 (Therese and Isabelle / The Alley Cats / Camille 2000); Radley Meztger Collection Volume 2 (Little Mother / The Dirty Girls / Score); The Radley Metzger Collection, Vol. 3 (The Lickerish Quartet/ Carmen, Baby/ The Princess and the Call Girl)

It is hard for current generations to understand how American culture has puritanically repressed our explorations in our own sub-conscious eroticism. Grillet, his wife, and Metzger explored BDSM over a period of almost fifty years. They often came under severe criticisms from contemporaries. However, they braved the public censure in order to present us with a tour of our own unexplanable sub-conscious eroticism.

Notwithstanding the relentless censure on such explorers as Grillet and Metzger, they are to be taken seriously in literature and film. Grillet was elected to the very elite "Academie Francaise." There are only 32 members of this pinnacle of French culture. He received an Oscar nomination for a brilliant film: Last Year at Marienbad. Other films in the sado-erotice genre, given to us by Grillet, include: La Belle Captive; Trans-Europ-Express. These films are considered exploitative by many, but, are deep explorations of our unconscious minds and the mysterious impulses they gift to us.

The title "Gradiva" comes from a German novel about a man who has a relationship with a dead woman by the name of "Gradiva." It was the only work of literature which Sigmund Freund attempted to psychoanalyze in order to explain the frequently unexplainable about our unconscious.

Grillet was also fascinated with the sketches and biography of De la Croix who explored sado-eroticism in Algeria in the 19th century.

Grillet weaves the biography of De la Croix, exploring his own eroticism, with the fascinating insights provided to us by Freud in his analysis of "Gradiva."

I give this film five stars because: (1) It is tasteful (even though focusing on some violence and sadistic sequences); (2) It is a serious exploration of human sexuality and human consciousness; and (3) the film is packed with powerful, meaningful images that invite us into the director's views of a complex, mysterious and often over-powering subject - our own erotic consciousness.

This film focuses on dual realities. It is an exploration of the consciousness with which we experience reality, and, the consciousness with which we experience our dreams. There is an earlier Italian film (1973) that has similar sado-erotic themes. You might find it useful for comparing this film. Baba Yaga. Here are some other films exploring sado-erotic themes: The Libertine (Also directed by Radley Metzger and starring a very young Jean Louis Tritignant); The Story of O (One of the earliest, and, most popular films dealing with women's sexual liberation through sado-eroticism);

This is an extraordinary film, an oneiric phantasmagoria capping Robbe-Grillet's career as a filmmaker. If you're new to his work, whether as a director or as a novelist, don't worry if you start off thinking it's the story of the discovery of some lost Delacroix sketches, then change your mind and see it as the story of a frame-up, and then change your mind again and take it for a psychological thriller, and then see it as a retelling of Madama Butterfly. (If you're not new to his work, you'll be expecting something like this.) It's all those things, and, while you won't be able to lay out the cause-and-effect relationships of all the pieces on graph paper, it nonetheless all coheres. The realism of classic storytelling--the Dickensian or Balzacian plot--has never had a place in Robbe-Grillet, but he offers instead a vision of reality beneath what we've trained ourselves to see day-to-day. In this he shows himself an heir of the Surrealists, and it's not for nothing that Gradiva's male lead is named John Locke. Indeed, one rather droll way of reading the film is as a critique of the sort of rationalism the flesh-and-blood Locke espoused. So approach this as a cinematic dream. (Indeed, pay particular attention to the little scene in which we learn all about the profession of dream acting, including how the government, while banning a great many things, still permits murders and sexual crimes to occur in dreams; Robbe-Grillet's sense of humor too often goes unnoticed.) The film does contain a good deal of sado-erotic imagery, but it's of a curious type, with none of that Dickensian realism to it, but rather the stuff of dreams, at least certain ones. Make of it what you will, but Robbe-Grillet never was a respecter of convention, and I suspect there is at least an element of épater le bourgeois to be had here.