Treasure of Bitch Island (1990)

From https://pics.filmaffinity.com/
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Director: F.J. Ossang

Screenwriter: F.J. Ossang

Cast: Stéphane Ferrara as Ponthans; Diogo Dória as Féodor Aldellio; José Wallenstein as Ulysse; Mapi Galán as Ada Della Cistereia; Lionel Tua as Fabiano; Michel Albertini as Bormane; Serge Avedikian as Le docteur Turc; Clovis Cornillac as Rubio; Patrick Quillier as Directeur Palace; Francisco Baião as Xico

Synopsis: The heir of the consortium Kryo'Corp, Ulysse (José Wallenstein), travels to the only place the substances for a new energy source can be found - the titular Bitch Island. Unfortunately, the island divided between its native tribes and the colonisers with their militarised zones, a cocktail of radiaition and drugs feeds into the downward spiral for Ulysses' team as they scrape against the various machinations.

F.J. Ossang has been a frustrating man to meet. Treasure of Bitch Island is the first to make any impression (as would Doctor Chance (1998)) in my discovery and marathon of his work as much as it makes aware how deeply flawed he is as a director-writer since his 1985 debut The Case of the Morituri Divisions, the musician/poet/filmmaker/ punk Ossang someone who should embody the anarchic nature of that era's independent cinema. Unlike Sogo 'Gakuryû' Ishii from Japan or the Cinema of the Transgression group from the United States, as comparison examples, Ossang also presents the worst stereotypes of pretension by accident. Despite lifting from b-movie genre tropes and his punk background, most of the events in his narratives take place off-screen, not an issue as its clearly his trademark with a sense of letting the viewer's imagination fill in the images spoken of, but its undercut by his tendency to spend the time on bland monologues that last ages rather than the moments in his films filled by pure lurid genre subversion.

From http://www.tasteofcinema.com/wp-content/
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Thus 9 Fingers (2017), about a criminal gang on a cargo ship with a nuclear weapon where paranoia and potential radiation poisoning are making things dangerous, focuses more on existential sounding dialogue that sadly isn't profound or with a sense of nuisance (as say) Jim Jarmusch's genre subversions. Rather than direct interaction with the premise itself, that in all the films I've seen have all been interesting, Ossang for his filmography has fallen into many squandered opportunities due to this: see Dharma Guns (2010), where the idea of a man's last experiences before his death from a jet ski accident is his soul going through a sci-fi paranoia thriller, with gothic tinges, sounding like something Guy Maddin would make only to procrastinate. Or his debut The Case of the Morituri Divisions where there is promise of a literal punk film in its rough production, its VHS text captions and futuristic gladatorial fights only for him to clearly not be invested in the film's premise in the slightest. It's neither "punk" to has this much dialogue in his films either, or really subversive, which is the biggest crippling flaw with his style. I quote someone like Ishii specifically as a film like Burst City (1982), whilst two hours long feeling like adrenalin shots directly into a blood vessel and not just for having actual punk bands playing in the film.

Arguably however his nineties films hit a peak where, for their flaws, he made the films I waited patiently for and have left a mark I will treasure. Bitch Island "somewhat" works and I think it's as much helped, even with Ossang's obstructive style, by the look of the film. Arguable for me is that his older work is far more rewarding than the later ones particularly in their visual palettes, but here he particularly had success, as with Doctor Chance, in terms of the aesthetic style; here Bitch Island has a particularly rancid but stylish monochrome look befitting the world. A place where, inhospitable and made worst by the protagonist's gang being both on drugs and on a doomed mission, it already has an impact; once you get to the titular island through a barb wire covered militarized zone, let alone the vast desert and industrial locations, there's a sense of a living breathing environment despite a lot of Ossang's films, to their detriment usually, being shot in still takes in close-ups, here actually working as the world is built from events only being talked of by implying them rather than depriving the audience of engagement.

Noticeably Ossang's cinematographer here was Darius Khondji, who'd go in to acclaim for David Fincher's Se7en (1995) and in general has an impressive filmography including work with James Gray, Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro, and even some idiosyncratic one-offs on his CV like Wong Kar-Wai's sole American film (My Blueberry Nights (2007), Michael Haneke's own remake of Funny Games (2007) and Zidane: A 21st Century Portrait (2006), an attempt in an avant-garde dialogue-less documentary to slow down and examine a football game with Zinedine Zidane as a hyper-sensual experience. Because of Khondji's style, heightened but also able throughout his career to be completely naturalistic too, Ossang is given an advantage as was hiring cinematographer Rémy Chevrin on the atmospherically colourful production of Doctor Chance.

It helps as well that, even in the obtuse style, the story here is at least interesting in what you get too. Baring a hotel with unhelpful staff, Bitch Island is not a safe place; ready to rupture between the natives and the rulers imposing over them, the only poor decision in the premise, and one of poor taste from Ossang, being that the figure the natives worship called the Korean Girl is actually a Caucasian actress. It doesn't completely redeem the film fully, as Ossang's style is, even if going for the theatre of the mind, obstructed by his attempts at romantic nihilism that is one of the worst issues with his screenwriting for me, but Bitch Island particularly as the central group of men get lost in the desert and start to puke and reach death on a mix of despair, their own drug intake and radiation sickness is an evocative scene which in little happening has immense power. Arguably, ironically, it's this tone and the cinematography that adds the edge rather than any of the dialogue spoken, the actors as well gamely losing their minds in-character and carrying the heavy burden unlike many of the other Ossang films which don't have a strand of connection, but because of when the dialogue has more to it in their spiralling madness or the fatalist sense of heroism that eventually overcomes those left.

From https://assets.mubi.com/images/film/33614/image-w856.jpg?1445879977

It does leave me sad that I've had a cold reaction to the director's work beforehand as between Bitch Island and especially Doctor Chance, its tale of (richly coloured) doomed romance in Chile where Joe Strummer is inexplicably there, as just from those two films without any other context Ossang should be a director I love and presume would continue to make films like the nineties productions. Here with Treasure of Bitch Island too I could see myself watching the two nineties productions repeatedly if they were actually available to see. And honestly, as mentioned, if this was the style of film he went with rather than a colder aesthetic style into the 2010s, I'd be surprised that Ossang never had films released even in the USA as - rather than being too stilted for punk cinema, too enamoured with his own voice rather than actually become risky and snotty in attitude - those imaginary films would've been awesome and cult pieces already. Hell, maybe something truly magical would've happened and I'd learn to appreciate the other films in his filmography and even liked them, which would've been even better.

Abstract Spectrum: Psychotronic/Oppressive/Stylish

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

Treasure of Bitch Island was the first film where I found something within F.J. Ossang, its warts and all actually adding to its personality as the material shone with virtues. It itself would be a film that would test others' patience, but for me it was a bright spot in a director, only discovering, I fear I would merely hate.

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Female Human Animal (2018)

From https://www.edgehill.ac.uk/events/files/2018/08
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Director: Josh Appignanesi

Screenplay: Josh Appignanesi and Chloe Aridjis

Cast: Chloe Aridjis as Chloe Aridjis; Marc Hosemann as the Man; Angus Wright as the Publisher; Patrick O'Kane as the Detective; Leonora Carrington as Herself

Synopsis: An author and curator on an exhibition on the surrealist artist Leonara Carrington, Chloe Aridjis (playing herself), encounters a strange yet handsome man (Marc Hosemann). Things do not go to plan.

It's not worth elaborating on a prologue when I openly found Female Human Animal completely missing the point of the subject. Surrealism is arguably my first ever obsession, even before cinema, finding books on the subject in my secondary school library at between the age of eleven to thirteen, developing from my adolescence a greater awe and influence from the movement even in my daily life in how I think about the world around myself. In hindsight to this, the film is the sort that would be dismissed outright by surrealist artists from the era themselves, and that's a tragedy as Leonora Carrington as a painter and author is, from the few pieces I know, someone who should have a greater reputation within the movement. More so as, reading a lot in my obsession, I'm fully aware for all their virtues the original French Surrealist movement were unfortunately chauvinist and sexist too. They had flaws and gender politics is such a case, even beyond the questions of how they festished and found danger in the female body but even how they treated their own like Germaine Dulac, director of The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928) which infamously had a cold reception from even her fellow surrealist artists. The boy's club has slowly been chipped away as the women who were also surrealists or even muses have been proven to be as exceptional as their male counterparts, more so now as Surrealism is as viewed for its various movements globally as it is the original French movement, and a film about Carrington would've been wonderful to see if it had succeeded.

Sadly, Female Human Animal is a case of an utterly intriguing hybrid which should have succeeded in showing the world of Carrington, even if it completely steps away from her motifs and tried its own curious ideas with merely her ideas on display. A study of Carrington's work, including not only scholar Chloe Aridjis playing herself but archive footage of Carrington being interview used as a voice of goddess over the proceedings as well; a psycho drama, in which a potentially dangerous dark eyed handsome stranger appears in Aridjis' life as her world in general becomes strange; and, noticeably, shot on VHS tape, a really peculiar stylistic choice that not only reminds you how much detail is lost in videotape, fuzzy as hell as it swallows clear outlines and detail, but was the most intriguing detail about Female Human Animal for myself viewing it.

From https://thefword.org.uk/content/uploads/2018/10/Screen-Shot-
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The truth of the matter is, whilst it has its moments, the film is slight. It also has the unfortunate effect of presenting the art world and English metropolis as pretentious and utterly tedious, way too good at doing so to begin our protagonist's sense of disenchantment but never adding a sense of greater depth, coupled by never feeling like a truly in-depth interpretation of Carrington's work. Her work (understandably) could only be recreated uncensored for cinema as animation, but the lo-fo attempt has motifs (Aridjis' in-film cat, the creepy father who can predict the weather over the phone) which briefly exhibit a tantalising surrealist edge. The VHS look, set among ordinary Liverpool environments, presents an additional advantage of its murkiness, how bright coloured artificial lights bleed onscreen or a warehouse becomes ominous in the shadows. However, it never feels like a true tribute to Carrington's subversion.

Instead, it becomes a very clichéd, trite psychodrama about a sociopath stalking Chloe Aridjis that (ironically) exhibits the worst aspects usually found in no-budget genre cinema of telling rote versions of stories from larger budgeted films, never being inventive as it forcibly tells a predictable story instead. It never feels subversive, which is the biggest sin and there's an uncomfortable sense of exploitative especially as, voicing the figure providing themes on love and sexuality, the slight and malnourished story doesn't justify the interview footage of Carrington at all. The only really interesting thing is Marc Hosemann's strangely magnetic performance as someone clearly off from the get-go, but has enough charisma that, in one of the few interesting plot dynamics, Aridjis can willingly let herself be brought into a relationship clearly dangerous when her life is bland beforehand and he intrigues her by literally invading her environment.

Another surprise is how bland the film is in terms of premise and content, and it amazes me I can actually cross reference Female Human Animal to the type of shot-of-video genre films of yore that are usually dismissed as garbage or even unheard of by the type of publications that will cover Female Human Animal. These films, loved by fans like myself, are openly known for being technically deficient in most cases and needing to be approached with an understanding of their immense failures, but are celebrated for their unintentional moods of delirium.

From https://frieze.com/sites/default/files/female_human_animal_online_7.jpg

FHA, despite being shot on video too and trying to evoke an uneasy weirdness, does place its head on the guillotine with such films rarely given critical praise like Boardinghouse (1982) would completely overshadow it completely in terms of truly surreal sense of  mood. The surrealists did watch "bad" cinema in their heyday but the goal, in one of the most meaningful things I read on them in terms of my own cinephilia, was never for irony but the result of finding the marvellous even in technical failure, the unnatural edge which a film like the infamous Canadian production Things (1989) would've rewarded someone like Salvador Dali tenfold. In contrast FHA is sedate, a deliberately put together production with no sense of the unearthly, transgressive, feminist or interesting within itself, feeling more like a tedious erotic thriller in premise.

The only real surprise is an ending credits sequence of boxes being wrapped up, following the motifs of plastic bags and suffocating cellophane throughout the production, one of the only remotely "odd" moments in the entire film.

Abstract Spectrum: Lo-Fi/Weird

Abstract Spectrum (High/Medium/Low/None): None

Personal Opinion:

Female Human Animal is a neutered, sanitised take on surrealism in spite of the worthy figure it idolises in Carrington and its intriguing production style. It's a film which has many different aspects but masters none of them as it is spread out too dully.

From https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DcsfWdkXUAANCw-.jpg

Régime sans pain (1985)

From https://www.scaruffi.com/director/ruiz/ruiz117.jpg

Director: Raul Ruiz

Screenplay: Raul Ruiz

Cast: Anne Alvaro as Alouette; Olivier Angèle as Jason/William III; Gérard Maimone as Professeur Pie

Synopsis: In a dystopian future, the former leader of the surviving world named William III (Olivier Angèle) has his memory wiped. Convinced by a female fan of the former leader named Alouette  (Anne Alvaro) to reconsider this decision however, she and the scientist behind the wipe named Professeur Pie (Gérard Maimone) train him to join the contest to become William IV and lead the world again.

Even for Raul Ruiz's career, Régime sans pain is weird; it was originally a planned music video for French musical duo Angel & Maimone that became this feature. Whether the case or not, it feels like Ruiz shot a whole batch of music videos for the duo which were linked together into a feature: one where the political power is won by a popularity contest, the Church teaches the sacred song but only allows parrots in the convert nowadays, and part of William III's phoenix like resurrection into William IV involving finding the right clothes, even if it's on a dying man in a burning car.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/ZKrDgJ3Dcxs/hqdefault.jpg

Régime sans pain is definitely a wacky production from Ruiz, more significantly as this is knee deep into the eighties, his mere eclectic and vibrant period between countries, projects and formats at their most extreme. This is certainly, out of those I've seen, of its era in a good way as he embraced Angel & Maimone's synth songs and a lo-fi futuristic aesthetic. This is, openly rather than implied, the only sci-fi film in Ruiz's career too, a perplexing world which is a subdued and almost ramshackle universe, between the desolate urban streets and the powerful high class elite, is contrasted by Ruiz openly embracing a pop art absurdity that even Lady Gaga's music videos seem conventional in comparison. There's an idea which thankfully keeps it all tied together well as an extended music video and a fully fledged film - that William III has every part of him wiped away (even his in-head credit cards) only to be offered a chance to become a new man, the next ruler William IV, a contest where he must become popular to the people by being less an active figure head but an idol, hence why finding his singing voice again is an excuse to use Olivier Angèle's singing but is written with having a purpose.

And when allowed to use the dreamlike logic of music videos, Ruiz gets incredibly strange, the dialogue becoming increasingly blurred in the illogical whilst the emphasis on stark colour aesthetic from his other eighties productions stands out more here due to its originals. Even as Gérard Maimone gets into a fencing duel with a morgue coroner over a dead man's clothes, this fits into the Ruzian patchwork of before and after in the director's career, the only distinction being Ruiz's most time stamped fit, not a bad thing if you want to have eighties aesthetic stretched and bent under the Chilean director's camera. Also as a tale of a figure becoming a new man, Olivier Angèle playing the naive yet charismatic blank to be rebuilt, scenes merely take ideas Ruiz would've had in another context but filtered through science fiction here, like a brothel where the female sex workers (rather than ghosts in another of his films) are holograms. It even hits an emotional point as, becoming a man again, William takes a decision which squanders his chances but is the more altruistic path, even if it doesn't conclude as such in an ironically convoluted way.

From https://www.scaruffi.com/director/ruiz/ruiz118.jpg

And the music itself, the music video sequences themselves, are interesting: good music but appropriately batty in what you witness visually, especially the extended scene in a building part of the hospital where you can claim the clothing of the dead as your own, Angèle going through clothes taken from the recently deceased in a blackened space choked in racks. The music itself is appropriate for Ruiz's world as, whilst Angel & Maimone's work is a laid back synth pop, Olivier Angèle's own use of English and French is apt for a filmmaker who confuses and obscures, his co-opting of a somewhat artsy and obscurer musical duo, clearly willing to be involved, feeling like a very clever decision on Ruiz's part. That and Angèle's partner in crime Gérard Maimone being a very cinematic actor in his own right in beard and with his deep voice. Together, they have arguably the best of results to their advantage too as, whilst I unfortunately never knew of them until seeing this film, they do come off as an interesting musical duo whose willingness to be in this production by a legendary cultish director gives them a lot of respect in itself.

Abstract Spectrum: Eccentric/Eighties/Music Video Logic/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Medium

Personal Opinion:

Even a 'minor' Raul Ruiz production like this is one to peak your attention. The eighties was a very productive and eclectic era where he worked on a dance/ballet film (Mammame (1986)) to a TV mini-series (Manoel on the Island of Marvels (1985)), so a music video that became a picture was an apt investment. It's a unique piece in his career - his sole hardcore sci-fi tale - and definitely as mad as a box of frogs just from what I have described. It's also absolutely worth being preserved and restored again, especially as whilst a dreamy VHS rip with Japanese hard copy subtitles suits the strangeness, Ruiz's rich aesthetic style even on a low budget deserves a clearer image, ever a director undermined by the prolific nature of his career and how obscurity and copyright is inevitably going to be a pain to see a film like Régime sans pain (1985) as intended.

From https://www.scaruffi.com/director/ruiz/ruiz124.jpg