LA FEMME PUBLIQUE    (1984)
Directed by Andrej Żuławski
113 minutes
In French with English subtitles

Polish director Andrej Żuławski (Possession, Love is the Important Thing) is certainly one of cinema's madmen. His films don't always make sense (neither do David Lynch's by the way), but it's clear that they are more concerned with explosive raw experience rather than an easy to follow storyline. This is what makes his films so full of life, so totally enmeshed with primal forces. His films push weirdness and mystery to the point of insanity... his own particular brand of Polish surrealism. His films always have a latent (and sometimes not at all latent) sexuality (not eroticism). Sex in his films is a wildfire- animalistic, ritualistic and passionate.

In this film we enter the world of a photographic model portrayed by 22 year-old Valerie Kaprisky. One day she auditions for a lead role in a drama based on Dostoyevsky's The Possessed which throws her life into a whirlwind of madness, and Valerie Kaprisky's powerhouse performance is sheer ecstasy. Her best quality isn't in her acting.... it's in her pure, vital, incredible energy. Rarely has waves of sheer sensuality exploded on the screen so intensely as in this film (though a good contender would Betty Blue).

So you can approach this film in several different ways.....you can try and figure out all of the intricate complexities... or you can just allow yourself to plunge into another world and let all the surreal sensual images engulf you. The cinematography by Sacha Vierny (the cameraman of Alain Resnais, Raúl Ruiz, and Peter Greenaway) is both beautiful and frantic... it chases the actors, it careens wildly into scenes, it swirls along spiral staircases, it prowls the streets full of dilapidated buildings.... all set to a pounding 80s synthesizer soundtrack.

Andrej Żuławski: "It's an extremely conservative culture now here in France, and they "know" everything, they've "organized" the world, you know. In a museum you know exactly who is a "good" painter and who is not. They organize their world and they can't understand after this 250 years of organization they now have behind them, why the people in this country are so unhappy. Why are they so gloomy? Why is there so much hatred and just...plain sadness? If you stay in Paris for a week you become so...a heavy burden, I don't know what, falls on your shoulders and you feel...so responsible...for everything, and nothing works. It's idiotic, because things are more or less like everywhere, it's a rich country and they have the problems they've invented, so... They want to control. People in front of a TV set want to control the TV set, they want to control you if you walk in the street, they yell if you do something wrong at the wheel of your car, they want to control. And having control they are very unhappy! Because this is the way to get unhappiness, to control."

The trailer: http://vimeo.com/37297044