“MADAME”

A Personal Documentary

Amos Lassen

Stephane Riethauser’s “Madame” is personal documentary in which he introduces us to his 90-year-old grandmother Caroline. The film explores the development of personal and gender identity in a patriarchal environment. 

Based on private archive footage, the film introduces us  to a strong and extravagant female figure who was the most successful businesswoman in Switzerland at a time when women stayed in the kitchen and at home and did not have the right to vote. She was independent and knew how to stand on her own in front of all the men around her. Her grandson who was raised to be the heir to the family business. He is a conservative alpha male and homophobe who suddenly comes out of the closet. Two people from the same family challenge the taboos of gender and sexuality.

Riethauser gives usan extremely honest and unflinching portrait of an aspect of his past.Caroline, the director’s grandmother (and muse) is an elderly woman who is anything but resigned. She seems to a controlled and bourgeois individual with a surprising strength of character. 

The film shows us the close and, at times, difficult relationship between the director and his grandmother who is a model of courage and determination. The direct and wholly sincere dialogue which establishes itself between these two beings, who veer between hypersensitivity and self-control, is explored through the rich family archives: short films shot in super 8 (filmed by the director’s father, but also by the filmmaker himself when we was just a small boy), footage of Riethauser and his grandmother (“Madame”) and slides and photographs of the family. 

Riethauser uses this film to give meaning to a particular aspect of his past which isn’t always linear or glorious. His current status as a director and spokesperson for the LGBT cause comes out of the suffering he has had to endure in the past. He felt obliged for a very long time to conform to a patriarchal, bourgeois version of society dominated by alpha males— a standardized version of “masculinity” which is both gruesome and ludicrous. Men, as described by the director’s father, should “have balls”, be courageous, fight for their family and their country.

Through his film, Riethauser not only paints a picture of the strong bond he shared with his grandmother but crucially, he also explores the patriarchal and bourgeois society within which genders must be interpreted and performed by being extremely careful not to upset the status quo. The young Stéphane ended up creating his own alter ego called “Riton”, a façade of pure arrogance and machismo behind which he could hide and self-annihilate. In ways such as this, the clichés surrounding gender are revealed. The director converses with the affluent, grandiose and complicated character of his grandmother, but he also voices his own inner dialogue, looking for traces of the “self” hidden beneath the hiding that he had to do as a result of a past governed by bourgeois respectability. 

Riethauser’s examination of his past and of his family is sincere and filled with humor. The power of this documentary is in the balance between intimacy and meticulousness, between the humor and the tragedy that is inherent to a reality based on appearances. He tells us at the beginning of the movie that the medium of film lets him express all those things that he was unable to say about love and sex during his childhood and adolescence. It’s his best way for taking a dispassionate and ironic look at how things used to be and gives him a liberated voice to a past that was dominated by “things unsaid”.The story of the relationship between the director and his grandmother relationship is the main crux of this documentary.

His grandmother, the matriarch of the family, was always a major influence in his life right from an early age.  She was a fiercely independent self-made woman who finally escaped the tyranny of her father who pushed her into marriage at 16 and that of her thug of a first husband.  Now 94 years old, she openly discusses her bad luck with men and with not a sign of bitterness.

The director looks back at all his personal turmoils of accepting his sexuality in a family environment where he was encouraged to be an alpha male in every sense of the world.  He uses this film to remind himself of how rough that  journey  was and  how after he finally accepts it himself, he can share the news with his family, and in particular, his grandmother.

The film is not just a cathartic journey for Riethauser, who as well as becoming a filmmaker is also a lawyer and gay activist, but also a glimpse into the remarkable relationship he shared with his grandmother. 

Riethauser’s facility with language makes us see sex roles in new ways: “a conception of women as mystical, helpless, and revered; men as controlling, aggressive and entitled, with shame and hate the fate of anyone who dares to move beyond the constructs.”

“THE TRIUMPH OF SODOM” (“El Triunfo de Sodoma”)

Underground Queer Cinema

Amos Lassen

Goyo Anchou’s “The Triumph of Sodom” is thought-provoking underground queer cinema and a contemporary LGBTQ political work that combines social manifestos about gender, performance art and pornography.

The film begins with documenting demonstrations on the streets of Buenos Aires. From there we are taken to the Queer Club for a Spoken Word performance. If there is a plot, it is best explained by a feminist poet who explains to a horny straight guy, how he can become a feminist, a vegan and why he should be castrated to advance the world revolution.

The documentary was made in the margins of the Argentine audiovisual community (from which some of the creative team have been effectively blacklisted). It was produced according to the precepts of guerrilla film making and it is something of  a romantic torch song. Guerrilla film making in the Latin America origins of its practice is as an act of cultural resistance that uses production constraints as a starting point to reshape its very language.

Thus, marginality goes from limitation to facilitation. The result is always original, because the reality with which the production is confronted is always original. The originality of the film is part of its nature: rare and subversive. It is ajourney of consciousness that is filled with power.

“BARE”

Eleven Naked Men Dancing

Amos Lassen

The documentary “Bare” is a celebration ofthe male body in all its complexity, might, and vulnerability. It chronicles the preparations for Belgian choreographer Thierry Smits’ provocative dance piece “Anima Ardens” (“Burning Soul”) which features 11 male dancers, all of whom appear completely nude for the duration of the performance. The film features men of all shapes, heights, builds, and penis sizes. The dancers bounce, jump, roll, and wiggle around the pristine white backdrop and stage.

Director Aleksandr M. Vinogradov begins with auditions bringing us a unique dynamic that transforms as the film progresses. We see Smits asking his prospective dancers if they have read the performance description in full and understand that the piece is to be done in the nude. Several dancers are visibly surprised and uncomfortable as they begin crossing their fully clothed legs as Smits makes clear that he is choosing men based on their dancing ability and the audition scenes are a challenge as the top dancers distinguish themselves through technique, form, and confidence.

 The dancers must abandon all sense of squeamishness and prudishness. The choreography directly confronts notions of masculinity and sexuality as it brings men together to create a uniquely homosocial space in which the dancers writhe on the floor or connect their bodies to create pyramids of strength. Notions of queerness and masculinity are torn away as the dance numbers have the men explore one another’s bodies, riding them of all insecurity about brushing a colleague’s genitalia in the service of art.

We see images of birth and renewal as the dancers crawl between the bodies of other dancers. Smits implores the dancers to loosen up and discover new energy as two men merge to form a birth canal through which a third dancer wiggles and emerges. The dancers scream, moan, and squat as they use their bodies to evoke the physical feat of child labor.

There are scenes of the dance troupe between excerpts of the performances that are as revealing as the dance sequences with their deconstruction of masculinity and gender norms. From the auditions to the final performance, we are present atthe ends of insecurity as some dancers take time to emerge from their shells. As the rehearsals move toward opening night, the men become looser on stage and open up with each other. 

The excerpts of “Animus Ardens” come across as a series of aimless compositions. Even the dancers complain to Smits that the piece lacks narrative coherence. The film explores the tensions within the troupe and the personal explorations of the self each that dancer goes through as he opens himself to the world. Ideas of masculinity, gender, and sexuality, create something new and exciting.

Aleksandr Vinogradov attempts to free the male form, as well as abstract it. The film is political in the depiction of a world “overrun by right-wing and neoliberal” ideals, conflating the unabashed nudity with leftism. The claims of freedom do have weight. It is provocative yet at times it is boring once the initial shock is over. Re-contextualizing this imagery through manhood is the closest the nude dancing comes to provocative and we never know if that’s what the film is trying to show.

The dance sequences are beautifully shot, fluid, and a contrast to a blank backdrop. The white walls stand out from the stage. The close-ups of skin reinforce a vulnerability as if the film is trying to reinforce masculinity rather than separate men from gendered traits.

The penis is on screen constantly, moving independently of the dancer’s body, almost like its own character. Even the most sex-positive viewer may struggle to engage with a film that so heavily draws the eye here and that stops challenging how long we can look at the exposed body.