Gloriously filmed in a diversity of landscapes and settings, this combination of dance, movement and speech kept the pulse racing, mainly because from the first minute to the last you can’t help thinking that someone is going to get hurt.
“Lay a slice of lemon on my tongue and feel the saliva,” says the lead performer. Director Wim Vandekeybus’s 52-minute offering is a similarly uncomfortable, if invigorating, experience.
An orgiastic feast scene in which someone gets inexplicably naked and a comminuted frog is consumed with relish, is followed by pseudo-masochistic tumblings on a gritty river bank. Swimming with dolphins provides some erotic relief in this piece where sex is never far away, but is depicted just once, and then fairly discreetly. Outdoors becomes indoors as the action transfers to a school hall, where girls, in senorita-style shoes, stand on the hands of men.
The dance in this film is disappointingly monotone – consisting largely of couples chasing through the undergrowth and rubbing up against each other.
However the music, by David Eugene Edwards and Woven Hand, serves the film’s theme of the conflict between the sexes well, adding to the sense of peril through banjo, guitar and weird folksy lyrics.
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