The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting (1978)

 

Director: Raúl Ruiz

Screenplay: Raúl Ruiz

Cast: Jean Rougeul as the Collector

An Abstract Candidate

 

Established in the beginning, with the unseen narrator and an art collector (Jean Rougeul) onscreen establishing the set-up and the later correcting the later onwards, The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting was originally meant to be an actual documentary on author, theorist, and artist Pierre Klossowski. Instead becoming a pastiche of a documentary, and paying tribute to Klossowski still with explicit references to his provocative last novel The Baphomet (1965), The Hypothesis... as with many other Ruiz films becomes of work of layers upon layers even in a work just over sixty minutes.

The set-up in itself is something you could expect in a more conventionally told mystery tale. A fictitious artist is created here, Fredéric Tonnerre, whose exhibition of a series of seven paintings caused a major yet mysterious scandal in the Parisian court in nineteenth century France. The art collector we follow believes the seven paintings were coded for a true meaning, the documentary we now see intending to demonstrate this to the viewer as, recreating the paintings onscreen with actors, the codes are found in replication and decoded. That one painting is lost causes an elusiveness to this, and as with other Ruiz tales, the point is never the conclusion but the hidden fragments and the journey we experience.

As with anything the Chilean director touches, more is to be revealed onscreen and early into his exile from his homeland in France, an added factor here is cinematographer Sacha Vierny. A true legend behind countless films, the film to touch on, and would be referred to in Vierny's work with Welsh director Peter Greenaway, is Last Year at Marienbad (1961), itself a curiosity as whilst a legendary title of its director Alain Resnais, more and more I myself look to its story writer, legendary author and later filmmaker Alain Robbe-Grillet, as much the author with Sacha Vierny. Whilst eventually unfolding with an unnerving beauty in the end, The Hypothesis... gets the initial parody successful, as this journey with the unnamed art collector raises a scandal of secret codes, connected directly to a novel written at the time, related to a secret cult. One which evokes The Baphomet novel, the piece of the puzzle for an actual viewer, like me, which would answer a lot of questions but many may not be even aware of or have read. By itself, it is a fascinating enough take on the notion of interpretation, especially as the mock up enactments of the paintings, heavy handed works of kitsch in some cases, force one to rethink the difference between how a film to a painting stages scenes, Ruiz not hiding when the actors, whilst standing still, sway a little and have to keep themselves steady.

The original figure of the project, before he transformed this documentary to one of his most well known films, is Pierre Klossowski, a polymath especially in where and how he crossed multiple mediums in his homeland of France. Translating Franz Kafka and Ludwig Wittgenstein at one point, acting in Robert Bresson's Au hasard, Balthazar (1966) at another, an author in his own right as much as writing on the likes of the Marquis de Sade, with his last novel The Baphomet, when a synopsis is glanced at, being of the Knights Templar, after their dissolution of heretical rights, reassemble as ghosts and leads to Klossowski himself, a Templar grand master and Frederick Nietzsche being introduced debating notions of morality between themselves. To some that would sound impossible for some to ever be able to engage with, whilst just that synopsis by itself, even with the director is not known for lengthy philosophical discussions in his works, sounds like something Ruiz dreamt up for his later films.

There is an irony knowing this is probably one of his most accessible films, as in one hour it encapsulates a very easy to grasp premise, but is one with enough in itself innately to fully serve his style. It is more restrained as, before his full blown eighties period of delirium, this is kept in a sedate elegance with its monochrome appearance, absolutely stunning to witness thanks to Sacha Vierny. Even Klossowski himself is much part of a greater mystery this hints at, more so as beforehand Ruiz had adapted one of his novels The Suspended Vocation, a 1950 publication, into a 1978 film from the same year. Alongside the narrative being about a seminarian in a Catholic Church organisation caught between jostling sides, one which might not even exist, Ruiz himself added a layer in how the film is structured as if one half was made at a significantly different time, alongside presentation, to evoke a production with its own mysteries in its incomplete form. (Apt as the novel is structured as a critique of a fictitious book of the same name). The Hypothesis... does not play these games, instead its own simple game. Even a painting of the hunter goddess Diana can be linked to a nineteenth century scandal, especially when the mirror is pointed out and the clues start to appear for the art collector.

Its elegance as a film makes sure as much that its mystery does not come off potentially ridiculous and overcooked, something it is in danger of when the art collector reads the entire narrative summary of a nineteenth century novel, a drama of deceit and hidden homosexuality, which may have easily turned the mystery in a cliché by trying to link everything together. It is helped considerably that the film is one of the best to start a novice to Ruiz's world with, but with fans seeing other films, it grows even beyond the obviousness of its material. It is, without trouble, a beautiful and eerie production, stunning especially when it begins with the staged recreations bleed into each other. With knowledge to Ruiz's career, the more mysteries at hand, the more questions are raised. Beyond the obvious, that the mystery's answer suggested here could merely be a theory, there is fixed a missing piece of the puzzle too, and also the fact that even in theory, one can find oneself caught in debate on interpretation, the art collector correcting the narrator, undercutting their place in a documentary as the authoritative voice that knows everything, and even questioning himself in the end.

Strange details alone raise questions, like the collector taking male plastic dolls, like Barbie ken dolls, out of a drawer as if to use them for a demonstration, only to put them away in another drawer in the same scene, and that he has used them in stages photos we see, add strange jokes and questions the more you see the film. Raúl Ruiz is a director perversely apt for the modern age, where you can return to films over and over, even if his work is ingrained into the past and history with great intelligence. (He is annoyingly never however one director among many others who have been betrayed by the lack of availability of his work by ignorance.) Ruiz here is as much compelling for the pleasure of his work, the imagination, as that in it is intellectual dissection. One of his fascinations was the concepts of doubles, drawing from theories of a 19th century Algerian activist and scholar Abd al-Qādir whose notion of the "veiled vision of divinities" was transposed to cinema by Ruiz. Ruiz, taking Qādir's concept of the divine being concealed within images of this world, which in turn reflect invisible realities with divine sparks, theorised that films themselves contained a hidden film, and every frame thus a secret frame¹. As an amateur fan, this stems more in his other work, especially the eighties work which, embracing almost pulp and cult-like film tropes as much as being serious works, the tales behind them as much as the images and how they connect together on-screen in one film having worlds-within-worlds for the filmmaker. Yet The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting radiates such virtue in itself, its simplicity growing to a beauty in its questions. Even with the morbidness of its final reveal, demon worship by holy orders, sacrificial child-boy priests and the material of gothic novels, the film eventually grows into something dreamlike when the art collector wanders a manor, once a stage for elaborate recreations, bled into by figures from paintings in living compositions more beautiful than the ones they originated from.

Reality, as mist enters rooms in the end, and Sacha Vierny guides such beautiful images with his director, dissipates as happens in a Raúl Ruiz film but it in itself feels more real and tangible, apt for a director where the dead do not disappear and immediately get back up in many cases, and the unnatural is as real and imposing in a film like City of Pirates (1984) after the initial set-up. It itself, with The Suspended Vocation, this film marked the early stages of a director who fled his home, due to a Chilean dictatorship, and yet found himself lost at sea in Europe managing a run, into 1990, that is as spectacular as cinema can be.

Abstract Spectrum: Eerie/Playful

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

 

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1) I myself will openly admit to taking this from The Brooklyn Rail website, from their Critics Page on the film by Dalia Neis from their May 2019 issue. It refers to material from the Poetics of Cinema, a book of Ruiz's transcribed lectures from 1992, which is both befitting a review of a work with many layers upon layers, and felt necessary to reference. It encapsulates a huge part of Raúl Ruiz the filmmaker in ideology for me now as a huge fan of his work.

Games of the Abstract: Sonic R (1997)

 

Publisher: Sega

Developers: Traveller's Tales and Sonic Team

Two Player

Saturn

 

Having a Saturn in my childhood, I admit to having nostalgia for Sonic R. As much of this was by not playing it properly with my older sister in the two player mode, specifically the mode where you had to pop blue balloons across the racetrack before your opponent, the characters instead becoming virtual dolls to create new stories with, moved across the locations off the tracks in our own stories. Nowadays, playing this again, there is both the fascinating story of how Sonic R came to be, alongside the more cynical nature of admitting, whilst playing through the original Sonic games only now, that until I gave up and played the blue hedgehog instead, that even in digital form the other characters probably stare daggers into him. More so as, when you collect the Chaos Emeralds, giant multi colour gems that have been a staple in the series from the beginning, Sonic him gets an unfair additional super version which is ultra fast, making such a race pointless even for an anthropomorphic red echidna that can climb walls. More so as, in a footrace racing game with platforming, where two characters drive and are useless in their inability to jump.

Sonic R has aged, but this has to be considered in mind that this was the only exclusive Sonic the Hedgehog game to come to the Sega Saturn, and that British developers Traveller's Tales, working with the hedgehog's creators Sonic Team, only started this project in February 1997 and the game was released later that year. This is more complicated as this is part of one of the greatest flaws of Sega which were becoming more of an issue by this time, even though Sonic R becomes an achievement in what was completed in such little time and released, that Sega had the communication issues and conflicts between the Western and Japanese branches. When the Saturn was being created, another conflict came about with Sonic X-treme, an unreleased attempt at a Sonic game in full three dimensional polygons for the first time in the character's franchise, a sequel by an American team which undercut in production in conflicts between the sides. This included the displeasure from the Japanese Sonic Team when they learnt the engine for Nights into Dreams (1996), a Saturn game which was released, was being used on Sonic X-treme. 

Sonic X-treme was eventually cancelled. In hindsight, whilst Nintendo always had a Mario game, even just one, on their consoles and handhelds which were part of the main franchise, the Saturn became an anomaly in how, for as long as Sega stayed in hardware, the Saturn missed a main franchise Sonic platformer. There was Sonic 3D (1996), an isometric 2D.5 game imported from the Mega Drive. Sonic Jam (1997) is a well regarded compilation, but cannot be seen as an official exclusive as, baring a 3D world for a segment, it was a compilation of the first three games. Sonic R became the sole exclusive, and this was not even a platformer, where you play the Sonic character running really fast and moving past obstacles, but starts a curious history of racing games for the franchise even though, despite this making a logical conclusion with Sonic being on foot, later games would have him in a car.

That softens what has aged. A slight game in length, in context to when, a game with little time to be put together nonetheless managed to be playable, where you race the existing cast in a selection of levels, all in a game which managed to make something visually and aesthetically striking. Sonic, Tails the Fox, Knuckles, Amy Rose the pink hedgehog and even the lead villain Dr. Robotnik race on tracks, multilayered ones varied as ancient ruins to an urban cityscape which continues the franchise's interest in flinging Sonic around on giant pinball tables. You can unlock more characters if you collect five gold coins on a course, and get into the first positions, allowing you to race those characters to win them, alongside the secret mentioned you can win with collecting the Chaos Emeralds, which you need to get in first place to keep. There are only four courses, the fifth unlocked a giant otherworldly one made from crystals and gems, which have multiple routes. Unlike later games with vehicles, this game despite two characters driving vehicles is a foot race. Platforming is involved as, alongside secret route, you can search for those collectables, or also to have an advantage over other racers by jumping ahead over obstacles.

The game's age, even in mind to an old Saturn playing my childhood copy, does show in terms of 3D graphics of this time, which were the new concern for publishers, where the draw distance is very limited, what you can see in front of you fading in abruptly as the polygons are brought in, and the game looking blocky. Its cartoon characters and bright colours does help considerably, and in truth, it is surprising Sonic R's template was never continued as the unconventional structure does stand out as a racing game, where you are skidding around corners, collecting rings to open short cuts and acquire Chaos Emeralds, and jumping over bodies of water (or land masses) for short cuts. The game as a result, if cleaned up, actually has a lot to appreciate as a game style to use, and once you get used to how different the characters move from cars, it gains a lot. Even if, with more time, some of the game, like Amy being a nightmare to steer, would have been drastically better if there was more time for fine tuning. More so as shortness of the game itself, very short to complete, is a factor to consider in the modern, one which is a factor for Sega Saturn in general with its arcade conversations. I admire the console for its content but, alongside most of the more interesting games never getting a Western release, it was also a console having to struggle in an era where people wanted 3D graphics and longer length games the Playstation could provided. Knowing the production history, something managing to work in its context, let alone a game with some credibility like this, does prove still a success.

More so due to the tone and aesthetic, enticing even if cheesy which is something of the personality of Sega itself; as someone who grew up with some of this franchise - the 1993-6 Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog animated series, and some of the games in fragments - I never got into the franchise as a child despite having a giant plush toy of the blue hedgehog, now as an adult getting to these games finally finding their unreal aesthetic enticing. The irony of later games incorporating human characters and realistic locations is not lost, when a game like Sonic CD (1993) before this is sumptuous as much for their complete lack of reality and the tone of Sega's entire aesthetic and mood attitudes, the famous Sega "blue skies".

This leans into the biggest virtues of Sonic R, is vibrancy fighting against the struggles of the graphics nowadays in its brightness. The biggest surprise and the lasting legacy of the game, for the production history for the game was in short time, perfectly suits Sega's entire tone as much as it could cause certain people to jam pencils into their ears but has become iconic. That is the music by British video game and film composer Richard Jacques with British singer Teresa Jane "TJ" Davis. Jacques' music is Euro dance-pop with very sentimental lyrics of joy and happiness based around the levels tentatively - the ancient ruins gets a song called Back in Time, the city one called Living in the City. It is unsubtle, cheesy and ridiculous, befitting Sega and what stayed with me the most since my youth. It has likely left the most lasting impact for people looking back at Sonic R as much as I adore the songs. It has become a game not as readily available anymore - though it has had a 1998 Windows version, and was converted for a 2005 Sonic compilation for multiple consoles - but it has, ironically, lived through the music as part of the Sonic legacy.

After this game, the franchise would get back on track in main series franchise titles with the two Sonic Adventure games for the Sega Dreamcast. That console however was Sega's last, and eventually the Sonic franchise, in  3D from there, would get mired in derided titles and the infamous 2006 Sonic the Hedgehog as much as titles like Sonic Mania (2017) being well regarded. Sonic R in context is a minor game, but one however that could be readapted into the modern day with its unique gaming mechanics. Aesthetically it has enough already to be iconic, but one could only imagine how much more Traveller's Tales and Sonic Team, who deserve a pat on the back for making the game as well as it turned out, could have gotten out of this production if they had more time.

MPD Psycho (2000)

 

Director: Takashi Miike

Screenplay: Eiji Ohtsuka, Gichi Ootsuka and Yumi Sirakura

Based on the manga by Eiji Ohtsuka

Cast: Ren Ôsugi as Tooru Sasayama, Naoki Hosaka as Kazuhiko Amamiya, Tomoko Nakajima as Machi Isono, Sadaharu Shiota as Masaki Manabe, Yoshinari Anan as Kikuo Toguchi, Rieko Miura as Honda, Lily as Yôko Yamamoto, Nae as Tomoyo Tanabe

A Night of the Thousand Horror (Shows) #39 / An Abstract Candidate

 

Reflecting on how I got into Takashi Miike as a director, I can think of a couple of titles in his filmography which helped shape the interest. Ichi the Killer (2001) - a very transgressive yet smart film, with greater layers than its infamy suggests. Rainy Dog (1997) - his sombre, compelling crime dramas, shot in Taiwan, arguably his best film or a strong contender for one. One I realise left a lasting mark early in getting into his career, and sadly in danger of being forgotten and unpreserved, is his 2000 mini-series based on a manga by Eiji Ohtsuka, who co-penned the series' script. From when Miike became big and notorious, and early DVD labels grabbed what they could of his career, this was a great example back then for me in showing Miike's workaholic mentality, constructing interesting productions in any medium.

It also, with fresh eyes, emphasises that despite his self professed "working director" viewpoint, that he works with others' material, he is an auteur. Truthfully, returning to MPD Psycho, its plot eventually becomes the weakest point, a strange mishmash from its manga source. It starts strangely but with a clear, intriguing beginning. Kazuhiko Amamiya (Naoki Hosaka) is a former police officer with split personalities. The show is not PC nowadays on this, confusing schizophrenia with multiple personality disorder, and sadly does not use this as much for Amamiya's character as it should; nonetheless he is someone with multiple personalities, one buried after the tragic murder of his wife. He killed the suspect as a cop, leading to a cover-up, and another personality to take over. That calm personality returns to the police as an outside help, for police detective Tooru Sasayama (Ren Ôsugi), when a series of perverse murders are taking place where, emphasising the manga's grotesque creativity, bodies are being buried with flowers growing out of their exposed brains.

The plot gets stranger, but stays the right side of compelling for the first half. The manga should be viewed as an entirely different work as, in the bit I have viewed, even from its first two volumes it is radically different in tone and content from this. The mini-series has that, stemming from an American hippy terrorist and musician Lucy Monostone, a sentient personality named Nishizono exists can transfer himself from host to host, invoking their homicidal side as he occupies them, another female sentient personality, able to also transfer through the web and phones, trying to stop him as Tooru and Amamiya with a female psychologist, effectively Amamiya's new boss and handler, have to deal with a variety of bizarre cases from school shootings based around brainwashed students to bingo games using severed body parts. The hosts Nishizono can occupy all have bar codes marked under one eye under the bottom eyelid, and he is directly connected to Amamiya and the murder of his first wife, alongside the kidnapping of his newest wife, all of which for the first three episodes, fifty plus minutes long to an hour, is compelling. The show does waver when it gets the final, with a convoluted exposition of artificially made personalities, to create killers, for a government project and trying to tie everyone together into the conspiracy. I do still love MDP Psycho, but I will admit the plot is ridiculous, more so when a huge exposition dump transpires near the end of the fifth episode, in a burning hospital, lasting long after the flames should have surely caused everyone to flee early in the exposition.

Where the show is still compelling is that, as a shot on digital production, Miike adds so much just as the director to this show in tone, improvising greatly. Even in the fifth episode, it ends abruptly with Tooru over the end credits, as a character who is with multiple women, wandering home to a miserable place with one of his romantic interests and her child, all slow burn tension as he tries to get a bath off-screen, broken by a moment of humour between the characters. The sense the mini-series has allowed Miike to improvise is felt throughout. The show, whilst the eventual need to explain everything does undercut it slightly, is idiosyncratic, and considering this is the director of the likes of Gozu (2005) and Visitor Q (2001), to say this is strange even for him at times tonally is a real crown of this show's virtues, more so as it is under seen. Miike was allowed to improvise around the narrative, without letting a low budget undercut him. The fact that I have always found the use of ordinary, grounded locations in Japan, in the streets and public places, evocative helps, but there are many of the flourishes, his impulsive, where Miike got his reputation for being unconventional but clearly showed his voice too. Little details stuck with me from the first time watching this mini-series and still do, such as there being green rain on beaches full of thrown away electronics, for example, with Miike one person whose use cheap and very obvious CGI always worked. Throughout, even using very creative placement of actors and props in scenes, this has the type of flourish outside of scripts that show the director's own creativity.

This goes as much in how, as a director with traits, his reoccurring actors are as much part of his style. Ren Ôsugi is the main reoccurring actor here, the stand out as the police detective and the one true friend of Amamiya, both as someone as talented to be able to be funny when need be for the comedy, but also to be serious when the narrative drama has to, a huge virtue as for the rest of his reoccurring actors in other films from the time for Miike. And when this gets wacky, Ôsugi gets a lot, an eccentric police chief who, when talking to his superiors about the latest murder case of strange spree killings, he will eventually have ones making comedic puns, with a Christmas tree in the background, and even playing a guitar. With his police assistant Tatsuya (Satoshi Matsuda), an otaku who, rather than presides over autopsies or real crime photos, creates intricate plastic figurines of the bizarre murders, and MPD Psycho does manage to slot itself as unique in the director's career, continuing his trend of idiosyncratic characters and an ability, without undercutting the drama, of having wacky humour that actually makes the characters distinct. Allowed to have tangents, Miike is allowed to breath, more so with a longer length of narrative to work with.

A huge virtue is that, even as a low budget production which embraces its style, but there is a lot of quality among those who are working with the director. The female personality is depicted in black 'n' white animation, a big aesthetic flourish among many that emphasis, even on low budgets, Takashi Miike is someone happy to embrace different aesthetic styles, such a stop motion in The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001), or his embracing on CGI regardless of how fake it looks. The music in particular for MPD Psycho by Tsugutoshi Goto and Yumi Shirakura, when it stands out, is striking. The main theme based as Lucy Monostone's, the death fixated Strange New World, is legitimate psychedelic rock which is haunting and strangely calm alongside the show's flourishes of audio aesthetic design. Considering this is a show that even defies how an episode should be structured, such as ending one after the end credits with an older woman calmly eating food in a cell, having the chance to direct a mini-series does show Miike alongside everyone working with him here, on or off-screen, are happy to take risks in terms of how this show presents itself.

The original world, as transported to this show, was already a distinct one to work with. Even if the plot has to try to wrap a lot up, it offers something intriguing connected to this format. The grotesqueness before, contrasted by the original manga's exceptional art style by Shou Tajima, elegant in appearance, is contrasted now by the surreality of early Miike when he worked with a lot of low budgets as a straight-to-video filmmaker who occasionally moved to theatrical films. One of the more contentious choices of the television mini-series, the censoring of gore by way of large blurred bars onscreen, is even deliberate, a weird touch to deliberately undercut how the narrative is perceived and not far from other times, whilst still being completely sincere, Miike has shown a trickster-like mentality to blur tone in his work or even undercut the mood of a film on purpose. Even in what the show looks like, it is helped that I have always found depictions of real Japanese locations, urban public sectors and on the street, compelling, always bustling or at least lived-in for many of these films rather than isolated in corridors.

It is also helped that, for the plot aspects which are absurd when revealed, of these personalities being the result of secret government experiments to have personalities that induce psychopathic behaviour just because, a lot is still startlingly relevant even if technology has evolved further from what this evokes. One major piece of exposition, a great example of pure colourful exposition than important, reveals the female personality is one of these experiments accidentally acquired off-line, a computer geek managing to update her better than a government in that, alongside being a benevolent personality also meant to be an artificial musical idol, she can enter any person through the internet and phones rather than the limitations Nishizono has, someone still able to enter people (and escape them) by modern technology. He even sneaks into a hospital at one point by way of floppy disc, and using anti-virus technology or just destroying a telephone tower have to be used to deal with the problem. Set at the time of the dying emperor, the end of the Showa era, this is still relevant in terms of how it plays with technology as much as it is a time piece in the best of ways, to the point that at one point a hospital staff member, a shut-in in a future life, is dragged into a war between these sides by way of his 2D girlfriend in a dating sim, when she is infected and develops an actual personality able to talk back to him. Even the hokeyness of the plot, more because it has to explain everything being rationally explained by technology, and having to make everyone related, has something salient as it evokes MK Ultra, a deeply troubling series of projects by the United States CIA in brainwashing and interrogating people, more so as this story stems from experiments by the United States in artificial personalities, but comes to Japan and its own history, including the left wing terrorist group the Japanese Red Army being evoked in the final episode.

MPD Psycho does still stand up even if the final narrative beats do go to directions it never should have needed. Only having some of the plot details being unnessary does not in the slightest undercut what virtues of here. In fact, it really emphasises that, whilst the narratives and drama in his work can be incredible, especially when he makes dramas, the virtues for Takashi Miike for me have come from when he has been allowed to match them with the creativity he shows onscreen. Returning to this mini-series, you have the perfect example to find in showing this virtue of his.

Abstract Spectrum: Bizarre/Grotesque/Weird

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

Games of the Abstract: Battle Pinball (1994)

 

Developer: Nippon Data Works

Publisher: Nippon Data Works

Multiplayer

3DO Interactive Multiplayer

 

Battle Pinball is a slight artefact I gained a fondness for after playing it. It is a fascinating piece, a Japanese only title for the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer console, a proper introduction to the console¹ that emphasises that, for the American created piece of hardware, it did however gain traction in Asia in Japan and also South Korea. Not to be confused with a 1995 SNES game of the same name, Battle Pinball has a fascinating gimmick too for the pinball genre worthy of being brought back, whether in a new premise or in the fantasy world where long forgotten title like this got rebooted. Namely that, as someone who likes pinball, this involves duelling pinball tables, where two players, be it against a CPU opponent or another player, or in a tournament option with more players, play their own table, scoring as many points until one runs out of balls in play or, if someone already has, the remaining player has a chance to score higher for the instant win.

Getting trick shots allows you to access power-ups, usually ones mean to disrupt your opponent, from dropping stop sign barriers on the other table or dropping a giant hand obscuring space. It is a slight game, with only four characters to choose from, and the single campaign only involves facing those four (including a doppelganger) before winning an early digital animated FMV (full motion video) cut scene as an ending. There is an alien, proven in their ending to be a bad spaceship driver; a male gambler; a very stoic mole man who works in construction; and the Grim Reaper. The Grim Reaper, a cute chibi version, alongside the mole man, has the most elaborate table, able to get more points easily in terms of on-table pieces like bumpers, but has a surprisingly sweet ending (and the most abrupt) of turning into an angel and ascending to Heaven. Considering the gambler just returns home to his wife, it is funny that Battle Pinball informs me that, rather than a bell ringing, winning a game of pinball gets an angel his wings.

This is one of those titles, obviously, in danger of being lost, likely forgotten as I did not even know of its existence beforehand. Pinball is a pretty simple concept to explain, even if the mechanics of real ones are complex and should not ignore. As a result, there are a lot of pinball machine, and pinball video games, which as a genre is one full of titles likely forgotten and left as abandon ware over the decades barring key titles. Battle Pinball is very simplistic, and mechanically, to bring the idea back you have to add a lot more. It has different pinball tables per character, which is repetitive after a while, let alone potentially giving someone an unfair advantage, especially as you have to play the exact same table over every game per single player mode or a tournament. It is a snippet of a premise you can elaborate on.

It is however a testament to an era which, brutally, has been written by the winners without enough preservation of the period. That of the fifth generation of game consoles is a period I saw part of as a kid but barely, looking back at the era with fascination yet with the few winners, Sony with the first Playstation and Nintendo 64 nostalgia, only being available. We do not really have real access to this era's countless titles. The 3DO, like the Atari Jaguar or even a better regarded console like the Sega Saturn, are not consoles where a great deal of their content is available to access baring a few, and the 3DO in particular is fascinating as it managed to get a sizable foothold outside of Western countries, where Japanese exclusive titles like Battle Pinball exist let alone visual novels, RPGs or the catalogue of Warp, the Kenji Eno studio which, whilst with titles coming to the West like D (1995), has a lot of Japanese exclusive titles in their catalogue just for this American video game console. Even that this has the aesthetic of very early, very crude 3D animated characters, the first tiptoe into the new graphical revolution, is fascinating to see, alongside the bright bouncy energy this still has even as a slight game. Again, this premise being remade, and improved upon, would be a cool take on the pinball genre. Personally, even as a public domain object, or better well preserved as a cheaply priced curio, this would be appreciated just to gawk at this period of time in videogame culture.

 

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1) The Vivid Interactive softcore, which was my first toe dipped into this obscure console, is as much of its personality, but was not exactly a game.

Games of the Abstract: Espgaluda (2003)

 

Publisher: AMI

Developer: Cave

Two Player

Arcade / Playstation 2 / Mobile

 

With this, I was introduced to the work of Cave, a company who from 1994 onwards made themselves into a studio with a cult fan base for their "Bullet Hell" shoot 'em ups. A section of the shoot 'em up genre, its title naturally sounds intimidating, an expansion on this genre which originates with a player vessel (a being or vehicle) being maneuvered past enemy bullets as they shoot back in a constantly forward progression, one where as the technical advancements allowed this to be the case, developers could fill the screen with entire walls of multi coloured death heading at the player. I admit this genre has been intimidating to try, despite my love for arcade games, knowing my level of skill is not great and "Bullet Hell" evokes something of a higher tier to me.

Cave however is fascinating though as, honing their games for the point of releasing multiple versions of a game, they also are happy to make this genre accessible to the curious with titles like Deathsmiles (2007) having multiple difficulty modes as much as adapting them for touch screen function on mobile phones. They seem, from just my first game, like developers who want to both make the ultimate versions of this sub-genre, to the point of creating "Black Label" and other versions of games that are more difficult for the really hardcore player, but also sculpting this niche genre to an art form the curious can try.

Espgaluda, whilst released in 2003, is an obscure title for them, the 2005 sequel more widely available in the later decade. A vertical shooter set in a fantasy steam punk world, where here you play a flying character in a world where, you play the two children of a King who, becoming obsessed with exploiting his Queen's generationally inherently supernatural powers, attempted to use them in a project to hone these powers into destructive ability. Still desiring the conquor other nations even when said children were led away from his grasp, your choice of two characters (a brother and a younger sister) now have to immediately fight their way through armies of their father's soldiers and war machines over war wasted land. Bullet Hell is apt as, a later game from Cave, they fill the screen with enemy bullets, making this game as much obstacle courses where you carefully weave around the patterns, more than even shooting back. It was surprising, whilst dying a lot, how much I managed to survive insane waves of bullets, but Cave have worked on mechanics on their games that make these games more interesting. Namely, whether implemented here or not, that they moved away from the player sprite (ship or character) being a target and specifically concerning the player(s) to protect a tiny piece, which can be indicated onscreen.

Espgaluda also has a really interesting mechanic too of switching between two forms of play style. The first is your standard fire, which produces gems for points and charge. The second is a more powerful firepower that is called the “kakusei” (“awakening”) ability which, when activated, briefly slows down bullets, allowing you to weave through them with ease, as well as, if you destroy an enemy when their bullets are onscreen, turns them from death into points whilst clearing that piece of the screen. Your special in that mode too, a powerful beam, also cuts through bullets, removing them, like a knife through butter, at the risk of bullets suddenly becoming faster towards you the longer you stay in it and, well, a very clever trick of forcing me (and any other player) not to get lazily preoccupied at a certain point in spamming one certain attack.

It also leads to the really idiosyncratic touch of the franchise as, even though the setting and tone is that of a majestic fantasy epic of magic combined to turn of the 19th/20th century Western setting, that awakening of your player character, playing magic users, for their secondary attack changes their genre whilst in that mode. Thus the male character becomes a female character, and the female character becomes a male one; even the main villain, their father becomes a woman when, in the multi-stage final boss fight, he switches to his secondary fire attacks too. It is never addressed why this happens, even in mind that Cave devotes in their work as much towards creating back stories for these games, as much because you have a limited time as an arcade shooter to elaborate on a plot. It never does however feel exploitative as it neither really becomes a really poignant touch in terms of gender politics. It is however, a fascinating one that, depending on the player, develops a greater weight especially as Espagaluda II went on with this premise, all just casually included in the prequel as part of its dark magical war narrative¹.

The world, again in mind to the limited timescale and structure this arcade game has to tell a narrative, is insanely elaborate. It is a gorgeous looking production, an elaborate world depicted where, with your protagonist flying in the sky (or two in two player), the world underneath is a vast series of turn-of-the-20th century Western architecture or vast industrial war machinery set to drum n bass. With almost every level having a mini boss and a boss, the animation for this game, sprite 2D work in the early 2000s when this was less common, is beautiful as the mechanical hordes, including flying sky vessels or a giant train boss, are heavily detailed. The game actually led to a bit of guilt as, almost the size of ants, there are human enemies to; they are dangerous, but between armoured foes exploding into a fountain of gore in one shot, or the maid angels in the final stages, twirling in their fire, whose corpses line the floors on mass, trust this Cave game to cause me remorse. More so as one of the bosses, who appears twice, is Seseri, a young woman who is a sibling that appears very early in the game, and then returns in the second to last level partially robotic, raising the stakes of this very serious toned game.

Your taste in this type of game entirely is based on the challenge. This has been a game not as readily available, which is a shame as Cave to their virtue, as a small studio, have made slow inroads into the Western market. The mobile phone game market has been one, but Microsoft have been an advantage too as, trying to push into the Japanese market again with the Xbox 360, that was when we got games like Deathsmiles even in the United Kingdom in physical released, even if still limited in number. A decade on and games are appearing more, which is great, leaving one hope that as many of their titles will make their way to the West, their titles even coming to the PC through the likes of Steam. Espgaluda in itself has made me really interested in this company, more so as their games, designed as much for hardcore shoot em up players, and for reply to get higher scores, are however making sure their games are accessible or at least have an enticement to outsiders to become obsessed with their brand of Bullet Hell games.

Playing the game as well has at least given me a moment I will keep to heart as a memory as a gamer. Cave, in mind that older games could suddenly slow down when trying to process the images onscreen in a very busy moment, also are known for deliberately including slow down moments on purpose for dramatic tension. Experiencing this in the midst of the fight with the train, this moment, part of their ethos to make unique games, whether one of the artificial slowdowns or a real one they embraced, is a second of gaming I will take to heart in having been glad to experience, as much as playing the entire game.

 

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1) And this is in mind that even Cave have had to sell their games based on more fetishes and titillation back home, such as Muchi Muchi Pork (2007), which for a lack of a better description, having the female pilots turned into pig women, is appealing to gaming geeks who really like skimpily dressed plump women. This, not only an issue with videogames, is a general case of having to sell these titles to a larger product, to be bluntly honest, which is for another review to debate.

Games of the Abstract: Let's Go Jungle! - Lost on the Island of Spice (2006)

 

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Sega

Two Player

Arcade

There are many arcade machines in existence, and if you are a company like Sega, who dominated the arcades since the eighties, you will have countless titles including those never ported to home consoles. This also means these titles can be forgotten or lost, or simply not easy to access if you are not near an arcade, which are not types of entertainment centre you may find everywhere. I look to how the closest to my region in my childhood, the seaside, were once places which had a lot of arcade machines in my youth in the nineties, but switched to a lot of machines that you win tickets for prizes from decades later, where baring one or two you may not find a lot of the arcade machines including the larger gimmick titles (racing cabinets and shooters) on display.

Thankfully, there has been resurgence in arcades, including those which are Free-to-Play, where I was able to play Let's Go Jungle and, for a cost of entry instead, the games do not need to be fed coins to continue on through them. This title is an obscure one as, Sega having made many light gun games alone over the years, and those like this requiring a full cabinet. This has the full shebang with two machine gun attachments which requires space. A gimmick game as a result, this is also from the date of its first premiere, 2006, a late era console. One after Sega sadly had to bow out of the hardware and console industry, but where some of their old magic appears.

A dysfunctional couple, a young man Ben and a young woman named Norah, are on vacation on an island clearly meant to represent Thailand, which we will get to later. With a little set-up, you are immediately thrown into a rampaging horde of giant spiders charging your tour jeep in the jungle, and even as someone without arachnophobia, I have to admit good job to the develops for reminding me that, whilst tiny spiders running around my home are a friendly visitor, for some people insects are so alien that seeing them this large even in this playful "Sega blue skies" tone shows why phobias exist. You eventually get giant frogs and a giant carnivorous plant, but as you go through hordes of mostly insect enemies - giant millipedes rolling in giant balls to worms - Sega missed a trick not acquiring Starship Troopers as a license, or making their own creepy insect shooter game loosely based on the same idea.

You have to clear through said hordes through the machine guns, similar to me to the Sega military game Behind Enemy Lines (1998), with the guns themselves sturdy and heavy enough that, with recoil built in for the rapid fire, they requiring negotiating around where you are aiming as much as hitting the targets. Also openly admitting trying this with Behind Enemy Lines, an attempt to weld both as a lark would probably be as inconvenient as it would be ridiculous unless you had the wrist strength. Thankfully whilst the game is designed as a two player, this even with tinier enemies in some cases (from hordes of flies and even butterflies) structures itself around waves where, keeping an eye on patterns and which enemy will move first, you can both get on top of them before they even can attack or make sure to keep on top of them. As long as you remember to move the gun slightly, for waves to get the entire line one-after-another, a skill can be learnt in recognising the patterns over multiple plays.

There is no real plot barring that, taking a fifties b-movie premise, the island is overrun by giant insects, only rather than nuclear radiation it is revealed to be caused by ill advised experiments with fungus and chemical manipulation. The game is quite short - three main levels, a fourth finale where, escaping the island, you get a memorable conclusion against a giant butterfly. The game also lets the players chose which second level they have, to choose one of two, one in the swamp with giant frogs, one in caves with giant maggots and sliding in one section shooting stalactites out of the way. Both Level 2s take away your standard weapons for two brief alternatives, either whacking giant frogs with boat paddles, or fighting off giant spiders with a slingshot, requiring timing your shots/blows more carefully. Additionally, there is a giant button in the centre of the main console, between the light guns, which must be button bashed for certain events, or hit at the right time for others in cinematic sequences.

Beyond this, it is simplistic. It represents the old gasp of Sega, even getting Daytona USA composer Takenobu Mitsuyoshi to write the music. It does present a whole issue, even in the mid-2000s, of exoticism and stereotypes even among the lovable Sega eccentricity. Namely that it is set in Thailand as an exotic location even for Japanese players, where even if it has the premise (as revealed) of the first world exploitation the Asian country, it is just the location and the Thai alphabetical aesthetic which is used. Thailand (or its vague stand-in) is just a location for giant spiders for Western leads to fight off. One boy, who you save the elephant of to get a ride, is the only real side character from the location. Everyone else is either a tour guide who is eaten or, in the Cave section, is a bystander runs off with your machine guns. This has to be based in mind with many games, and a friendly reminder that cultural appropriation is not just a concern with Western media to ponder, even if this is not an extreme example.

Beyond that one issue to ponder, Let's Go Jungle is fun. Honestly, it is a minor game for me just in terms of what you get. But from the little I have experienced from Sega, they have a magic to their work which this has a little of, and as a result, I cannot dismiss it. The time from when it was made, makes this have a tinge of nostalgia to it as a result, one which would be success. That Let's Go Jungle did get a sequel, and a curious spin-off based on the Transformers film license called Transformers: Human Alliance (2013). Whether a game like this ever got a wider access beyond arcades is to be debated, but thankfully, I was able to play this as intended, and appreciate an example of Sega in an environment where they were kings.

Fearless Tiger (1991)

 

Director: Ron Hulme

Screenplay: Ron Hulme, J. Stephen Maunder and Jalal Merhi

Cast: Jalal Merhi as Lyle Camille; Monika Schnarre as Ashley; Lazar Rockwood as Saalamar; Jamie Farr as Sam Camille; Bolo Yeung as Master on Mountain; K. Dock Yip as Do Man; Sonny Onoo as Peng; Glenn Kwann as Boh; Jean Frenette as Jacques

Ephemeral Waves

 

All you think about is entering those *stupid* tournaments and chewing that *stupid* gum!

 

At one point, I was collecting a lot of second hand DVDs in the martial arts genre. Storage lead to many being sold off, the physical limits of what you can access always an inherent problem especially when, even if not the best of films, these titles in themselves are still fascinating as historical objects. I admit as well a changing taste at the time too, but I also admit regret with this. Many of them were, frankly, not masterpieces and represented within the martial arts genre how, when the genre took hold, these films were continually made. Godfrey Ho, including his regular martial arts films before the infamous cut-and-paste ninja films, was a regular on shelves of second hand stores at one point where I come from, but so were the many Western straight-to-video productions of the nineties and eighties. I have to be careful with my words as Fearless Tiger represents the Canadians entering the genre, rather than the Americans as I always presumed before.

Certainly returning to this film, when as well I always thought the DVD copy I had was no longer playable due to not being even able to scroll on the DVD menu to press play, it is amazing to think that the straight-to-video era had as many tangents as it had. Even an ultra obscure film like this offers a history in itself as I kept crossing paths onscreen with the figure who, the lead figure here, appeared as a side character in other straight-to-video films I found second hand from a DVD distributor calling themselves Hollywood Films in Britain. That figure was Jalal Merhi, who played a greater part in the gestation of the likes of this to a film called Talons of the Eagle (1992) that Hollywood Films released in the early years of the British DVD industry. A Brazilian-Canadian of Lebanese descent, his role here is oddly autobiographical. Here he is a graduating student who decides to reject a job at his father's lucrative business to invest in becoming a better martial arts practitioner in Hong Kong, especially in mind to his younger brother dying of a drug overdose. Merhi himself invested the original business he was in, jewellery selling, to found Film One Productions, where he would produce and direct films as well as star in them.

His debut onscreen is a simple premise. As long as drugs are seen as a taboo, so films like this exist, where a secret drug dealing organisation lead by Saalamar (Lazar Rockwood), masquerading as monks who compete in martial arts fighting competitions, are creating a type of opium flake called "Nirvana". Merhi's lead is pulled in when his brother tragically dies from an overdose, being brought over to Hong Kong by police detective Peng (Sonny Onoo) to train with his teacher, wishing to find himself in the wake of his loss, and being pulled further into Saalamar's territory. If I am to be blunt, Fearless Tiger is a pretty dry film. The martial arts in adequate, and the plot progression, including an underground tournament on a ring in the middle of the Hong Kong woodlands, are hurdled through quickly. The acting including by Merhi varies considerably, and feels like a film churned out from the middle of a wave of countless martial arts films made at the time. (In fact, for the latter, it is the police offices in the Hong Kong police force with Peng, when it was still part of the British Commonwealth, which came off the broadest of the lot).

Far more interesting to view a film like this through is by the figures that drift through them. This is Merhi's first film, so the most prominent name is martial arts actor Bolo Yeung. Distinct with his barrel chest, even if he keeps his shirt on here, it is a change for him to not be playing a villain but instead a master for Merhi to learn from. Sadly, he is only in two scenes, never having any real importance to the film baring teaching Merhi how to catch steel balls. Only a peculiar scene of he and Merhi training with a woman, playing Yeung's daughter (never seen again after) doing dance poses between them all lets the cult actor have any real fun in the film. His involvement did however kick the door open for the likes of Billy Blanks and Cynthia Rothrock, alongside Yeung himself in meatier roles, in later Film One productions, so this was a necessary start.

The cast here, whilst obscurer, is a peculiar one to say the least. Sticking out like a gaunt Billy Drago, just from his coloured headbands, is Lazar Rockwood as a main villain who never gets into a fight, is not in the final confrontation at all (when Merhi has to fight one of his minions instead) and abruptly leaving the film, but is still compelling. Rockwood, as a Yugoslavian-Canadian actor with a small filmography, would have passed me by as a younger man with significantly less knowledge of cult films, but is more meaningful knowing how, bizarre, he got here from Beyond the 7th Door (1987), a peculiar micro-budget film that sticks out in no genre, a proto-Saw thriller where Lockwood (with his idiosyncratic acting style) has to survive through traps in a mansion, with puzzles to solve some, for a fortune.

Probably more perplexing for me, now as a wiser person, is that Peng is played by Sonny Onoo. Onoo is not Chinese, but Japanese American, and if you draw a little moustache on him and give him sunglasses, he becomes the prominent non-ring character for the professional wrestling company World Championship Wrestling who he began working for over many years. His character sadly played to anti-Japanese sentiment for the Southern based company, with the unfortunate end of his role there suing a writer named Vince Russo for racial discrimination, but Onoo is a fondly remembered figure to older wrestling fans. Alongside the fact he would be the on-screen manager to Japanese wrestlers who were likely first seen for the first time by American viewers, legends of the profession including female Japanese wrestlers considered some of the best of any gender, it is surreal to see him here. Seeing Onoo, as Peng, not only show some martial arts skill as well as show his charisma, including a constant smirk he would use in his more well know acting role, is stupefying to witness, and a really fascinating example of pop culture filtering into each other.

As a film, Fearless Tiger is a slight martial arts film. The quality of the fight scenes, even in just the context of American films from the time, is average and it does in context feel like a tentative push into a genre from an outsider. The underground fighting tournament, where death is apparently common, feels instead like a jaunt in the woods baring being kicked in the head in matches and some gambling. It knows it is goofy sometimes, for in the final act a hostage negotiation transpires in an art gallery, and sometimes it probably did not, when as Merhi first goes after the drug dealers, you have a stereotypical edgy metal bar where the trash metal playing is a ridiculous song of the era about the ordinary dulled working person being a "bad dog". Surrounding a specialist drug hidden in cheap Buddhist statues, this does not change the wheel at all in its genre, but feels with hindsight to its origins like a small company, and Merhi himself, trying his hardest to get into this industry. He eventually would succeed as this production company would continue on in the nineties, and as much because of the back-story of binging on these types of films at the time, I find myself becoming fonder of a movie like this.

Comedy of Innocence (2000)

 

Director: Raúl Ruiz

Screenplay: François Dumas and Raúl Ruiz

Based on a novel by Massimo Bontempelli

Cast: Isabelle Huppert as Ariane; Jeanne Balibar as Isabella; Charles Berling as Serge; Edith Scob as Laurence; Nils Hugon as Camille; Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre as Hélène; Denis Podalydès as Pierre; Chantal Bronner as Martine; Bruno Marengo as Alexandre

Canon Fodder

 

Judging its initial tone, with a significant French actress in Isabelle Huppert in the lead, Comedy of Innocence feels like a conventional film from the Chilean director Raúl Ruiz. However, as with Huppert's own career being full of idiosyncratic films, and Ruiz's sense of "conventional" filmmaking (including one American film with William Baldwin called Shattered Image (1998)) being unpredictable in itself, Comedy of Innocence does change as it goes along. It is, in a period of working with bigger budgets and actors like Catherine Deneuve, an attempt to make a Ruiz film for a wider audience. But this is still a Ruiz film. This is not even factoring its source material being from a novelist and playwright, Massimo Bontempelli, who worked magic realism, and especially when you compare this to a true exception from the radical career of Ruiz, of a compromise, Comedy of Innocence does prove more radical than presumed. That exception came with one of Ruiz's last films before his 2011 death, A Closed Book (2010). A British produced novel adaptation, of a Gilbert Adair novel with the author penning the screenplay, it was thankfully not his last production, its themes of art and with a lead character being blind, including how he literally has no eyes due to an accident, fully making sense as a subject for Ruiz to tackle but feeling like a movie from a working direction contributing little of their own personality to it. It feels conventional and also feels perfunctory, lacking Ruiz's personality, which would have found its mystery thriller plot twists far less interesting than they are in the actual film we got. Comedy of Innocence, even when it tries to rationally explain key plot points, cannot be extracted from Ruiz's willingness to undermine conventions.

Huppert's lead Ariane finds, after her son Camille's birthday, him telling her he wants to see his real mother. This figure, Isabella (Jeanne Balibar), commands a significant prescience when she enters Ariane's life, a mother who lost her son and with Ariane's son seeing himself to be Isabella's. The film eventually offers an explanation grounded in reality - manipulation both by Isabella but also Camille the son himself being more mysterious than presumed - but Ruiz's film even in the later plot reveal, Camille wanting a different family, feels ghostly and ill-at-ease in spite of its title. This belongs as well to a period of cinema of my youth called the "Artificial Eye" era, which helps considerably for its tone, where the former British distribution company, before becoming Curzon Artificial Eye in the 2010s, distributed world cinema especially French and European films of the late nineties and 2000s very much with this film's presentation. Prominent actors like Huppert herself were in them, many like this are set among middle class or well off families, and their cinematography and visual looks were relaxed with very little to radically challenge the aesthetics, with the use of normal urban environments a commonplace aspect.

This could however prove a fascinating aesthetic for certain directors to make a film within. Again with Huppert, you can look to another film she made within the same year, Claude Chabrol's Merci pour le Chocolat (2000), which in a major spoiler disrupts the idealised middle class French family with the reveal of poison having been used in hot chocolate. Likewise, Ruiz's film here is calm and almost alien to his legacy before, especially his golden era of the eighties for me of delirious filmmaking, but the ghost of that era between the late seventies to The Golden Boat (1990), is evoked. That era was distinct as, working in whether context he could, in a prominent cinematic style especially in the obsession with colour gels, and the ghost of his unconventional plot structures breaks through here in its lapses away from its apparent rational explanations and sudden distorted coloured scenes, the later evoking those eighties films. This film has a lot in common with his previous films. Despite being her beloved son, Camille is very close to a figure like the boy from City of Pirates (1983), who talked of being a killer, Camille here sinister eventually in how he gets more serious, beyond his years, and that when he gets angry. Carrying all the time a film cassette camera, he can even use it to torment a person, even his real mother Ariane, by filming them at a vulnerable moment. Despite very little seemingly happening onscreen beyond the grounded drama, this film's narrative feels haunted as other Ruiz narratives were in strange magical touches beyond logic.

Even within its aesthetic, cutting away many of his flourishes from the past, Ruiz still has his traits here. The cuts to coloured distorted views, or for when Isabella suggests Ariane's own wall paintings in her home on the wall look like pregnant women, all intrude and make the film more elusive than presumed. It is a film, in spite of trying to ground itself in the finale, which feels increasingly at odds to itself on purpose. And whilst more rationalised - i.e. more accessible to a wider audience - this is still a film about eventually Camille having two mothers in a fraught psycho dramatic relationship. That the ghost of Isabella's son may have possessed Camille is evoked, and that his seemingly imaginary friend Alexandre is revealed to be a real boy, who can appear out of nowhere when the crisis even connects to his relationship to Camille, offers a film more than it may suggest on purpose. It lacks the tangents of other Ruiz films, but in mind to the source material's author and he himself, Ruiz makes a film fully of his own still with is dramatically also compelling on a surface level.

It emphasises Ruiz as an auteur, but credit is where it is due too, that this is also a compelling narrative which defies a thriller or a mystery genre template in its structure, and that Isabelle Huppert is a huge virtue here too. Mentioned before, her career, whilst as well being a legend in French and European cinema, has always been idiosyncratic, from a cameo in her earliest roles in novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet's Successive Slidings of Pleasure (1974) to Jean Luc-Godard's Every Man For Himself (1980). She is a great case of the star as an idol who also encourages creativity in her desire to grow as a performer as, alongside the tradition of idiosyncratic figures like Ruiz being work in French co-franchised films, she is a paradox of a immediately recognisable and bankable actress on the marquee yet one who wants to make her own creative choices which allow unique productions being made. Tilda Swinton is one of the sole figures outside of the European stars, with great legacies, who immediately springs to mind as an equal comparison, and here particularly, this film for me, as a later film from Ruiz, manages to build a rewarding parallel between two different eras of cinema (Ruiz and this era of world cinema) I love to considerable effect.