ChiveOwen

Beautiful, disgusting, brilliant, profane. Without understatement, this is a rich text that feels as relevant now as it must have almost forty years **** manner of bodily fluids. Sex. Violence. Rotting meat. Naked people pressed against rotting meat. The first in the You May Also Like is Salo: 120 Days of Sodom. While it isn't as graphic as that, it is a film that will disgust **** yet it is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen. The sets, the cinematography, the costumes and costume changes: it feels like slow pans over the paintings of Renaissance masters. The realism and artificialality blend in ecstatic alchemy.Michael Gambon(The Thief /Albert Spica) plays a relentless gangster who imagines he has good taste; I dont think I've seen a character uncomfortably dominate everyone around him except for Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast. Crass, anti intellectual, rapacious and exploitative. He is the ruling class. Evil. Fascism. The Devil. How ever you choose to read it, he wreaks absolute havoc. It fascinates me how aggressive can be in its symbolism while still holding room for so many different readings.Helen Mirin is his abused wife finds love in the arms of a bookish man, who with the help of the chef at the restaurant the thief owns. The context to of this being made in Thatcherite England is no **** all time great score. Everything about this is electrifying. I am adding Peter Greenway to my spectacular British weirdo directors along with Ken Russell, Derek Jarman and Nicholas Roeg. Absolute mad lads, all of them; perhaps Greenway most of all.Strongly, enthusiastically recommend. Tremendous, transgressive and transfixing.