DVD: Conspirators of Pleasure | reviews, news & interviews
DVD: Conspirators of Pleasure
DVD: Conspirators of Pleasure
The great Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer looks at the craft of perversion
A few of the things that are made to seem intensely erotic in this film: glue, bread, nails, carp, a satchel, a lift door, the death of a hen, the postal service, and in one particularly discombobulating scene, giant multi-headed shaving brushes.
If that sounds dark, it is on occasion, and sometimes intensely so – but it is also bizarrely heart-warming. This is above all a film about the bloody-minded human desire to create, a strikingly tactile portrait of craft, of the love for materials, objects, foodstuffs and of the imagination made real. There is relatively little of the trademark stop-motion animation of Švankmajer's Communist-era films here, instead it is all about his skill with the camera in framing objects, hands and faces close-up to make them seem new and peculiar.
Conspirators of Pleasure is slow-moving for most of its 82 minutes but its materiality, the way it manifests its characters' physical obsessions, makes even its static moments fascinating, in the way of a Beuys or Matthew Barney installation – and the climaxes to which its characters (literally) build are startling and hilarious. Not exactly family Saturday afternoon viewing, then, but a beautifully cranky, memorable construction.
Watch a clip from Conspirators of Pleasure
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