Egomania: Island without Hope (1986)

 

Director: Christoph Schlingensief

Screenplay: Christoph Schlingensief

Cast: Udo Kier as Baron Tante Teufel; Tilda Swinton as Sally; Uwe Fellensiek as William; Anna Fechter as Ria; Anastasia Kudelka as Annastasia; Sergej Gleitmann as Anatol; Dietrich Kuhlbrodt as the Notary

An Abstract Candidate

 

I’m the devil’s aunt!

A Christoph Schlingensief film I am glad to catch up to, it is set on an isolated island where a few people speaking different languages live. One is Tilda Swinton, playing Sally, enforcing how the London born actress is one of cinema’s true travelers in terms of her filmography. Even when she is in mainstream blockbusters it raises an interest for me, and her obsession with collaborating with some of cinema’s most idiosyncratic filmmakers surpasses anyone else, whether it is Bela Tarr (The Man From London (2007)), Apichatpong Weerasethakul (Memoria (2021)) or even her long standing collaboration with Derek Jarman in her early career, all these figures alien to each other and representing different types of cinema in themselves she has yet travelled within like a space traveler. Among them, Christoph Schlingensief is another really idiosyncratic figure to have collaborated with too, and it also means we can be Swinton onscreen with Udo Kier, another of the great journey actors, opening with Swinton among other witch-like women carrying a man seemingly like Christ across icy tundra.

Considering its director, this will become his heightened cinema by the ending, but for a large part this is a distinct turn for him for having an oppressive mood early on like horror cinema, the sound design and music – the later by Tom Dokoupil, Ella Johnson, Christoph Schlingensief himself and Helge Schneider -  leaving one on edge before anything happens. Udo, playing Baron Tante Teufel, is a man caught between being a man of privilege and a demon, definitely with a satanic edge to himself which he fights and loses too, fixated on Sally who he had a previous relationship with. Driven insane by this force within him, Kier’s debonair figure with a push by an older woman named Ria, who just wanted him to kill her, decides to punish her for becoming pregnant from another man named William (Uwe Fellensiek). If it means taking his love from her and the child it will suffice.

It is a mood piece, part theatre in tone, and definitely becomes its director’s trademarks when Udo Kier, game as in his other collaborations with his fellow German collaborator movies, does dress up in women’s clothes like a Satanic female relative who has a book reading club, mad eyed and aiming beyond wall chewing. Egomania unlike the others, which could be deliberately offensive and manic, is however more subdued in tone, something of its own. Separated into multiple chapters, and with a very unexpected and inspired touch of old jazz standards scoring this throughout, Egomania feels like a bleak fairy tale in tone, with the Devil in Kier (with his servant Anatol (Sergej Gleitmann)) going out to punish Sally, from giving William forced forgetfulness, to stealing the child on behalf of a notary figure who argues crime is entirely justifiable. It is an interesting entry point for Schlingensief’s cinema, and arguably the best way to come to his work, even if there will be some uncomfortable with the ending, Kier menacing a fake baby in a boiler room-like space. Unlike other work which is more notably cult in tone, this is easier to get to then the really challenging films like United Trash (1996) which get into slapstick transgression, instead leaving one on edge.

It is a testament to Kier as an actor, absolutely on fire in his entire run with Christoph Schlingensief, and a reminder that his journey in b-movies contrasts a man who, always comfortable in any role, was working here or with Rainer Werner Fassbinder or with Lars von Trier among others; even Flesh for Frankenstein (1973) and Blood for Dracula (1974), the infamous Andy Warhol sponsored and Paul Morrissey directed horror films, where Kier is notably struggling with speaking in English, not his native language, was giving it his all regardless. The same is for Swinton, even if this might disappoint some for how small and subdued her role is next to others in her career, standing out as the one person speaking English in the cast, standing out for how the young Swinton, here and with the Derek Jarman films, is virtually different from the acclaimed veteran she became. She was always a chameleon in terms of acting, and the Jarman references feel apt for Egomania, less comparable to other Schlingensief films like The German Chainsaw Massacre (1990) but one of Jarman’s like The Last of England (1987). One scene, merely interacting with the young child playing hers on the beach in what is out-of-character b-footage, but being used still in film, does feel like a Jarman-like touch from a director very notorious for how confrontation he would get in his career in his own trademarks, mo re a whimsical improvisation you normally do not get with Schlingensief.

Schlingensief himself is a director who does deserve an even bigger reputation, and I hope one day, as the brief access to his work on streaming and other methods give him more notability, we will eventually get the big physical media release of his work. His only aspect is that he was confrontational which will challenge a lot of people. Some was deliberately shocking for his political satire, such as attacking fascist politics and xenophobia in a 2000 staged project, Foreigners out! Schlingensiefs Container, by envisioning a reality TV show scenario where the audience could vote asylum seekers out of the country per voting period. Other things, like United Trash having Udo Kier in black face which, even in a film condemning of the United Nations in post-colonial Africa and their influence over them, will not go over still even if Schlingensief is entirely there to attack the white foreigners. Aspects which will challenge viewers even in good taste would make his work more likely to win over cult film fans, but again, his work can be very unconventional even in this scenario, even with The German Chainsaw Massacre playing as a horror film but reflecting the post Iron Curtain when East and West Germany reconnected. His work though, blurring genre to art house, really compels me and this, one of the less grandstanding and confrontational, is still brimming with an intensity to admire.

Abstract Spectrum: Atmospheric

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