Give Me Pity!

This film is intentionally exhausting because it wants you to feel the way Sissy feels as the special concludes: chewed up, spit out, used, abused, martyred for something you thought could love you back.

The entirety of Give Me Pity! is more of an artistic treatise, a museum piece, a series of single-woman monologues, than a coherent, you know, film, and that’s clearly the intention. One can do a lot worse than take a look inside Kramer’s head, and this one makes her other explorations of humanity, Please Baby Please and Ladyworld, seem positively conventional. Quite the feat.

Kramer fires on all cylinders in terms of imagery and tone – both are perfectly executed and entirely captivating. Aesthetically, this experiment proves to be a masterful exercise in high camp.

Everything about this film is very well observed.

Kramer’s vision is distinctive: playful and jarringly lurid. Give Me Pity! is a one-off – and that’s probably a good thing.