esrosedotblog

Today and yesterday, I watched a long, meandering French art film that features a zombie.

There was no distribution of this Jacques Revette film in America and it is not surprising. It is slow, slow, slow with the truth emerging late in the game when it reveals itself as film about the undead.

Emmanuelle Béart is the ghost or phantom. In an interview Revette plays coy with the difference.

This realization comes to us just short of the hero who is hardly heroic. Jerzy Radziwilowicz. An obvious stage name!?!

I liked it a lot but that is mostly because I watched rather than listened to the twisted plot.

Strange strange strange.

I had to look the word up. Zombie. And I am still not sure I am correct. The radical (then) psychologist R. D. Laing was fascinated with the idea.

"Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing highlighted the link between social and cultural expectations and compulsion, in the context of schizophrenia and other mental illness, suggesting that schizogenesis may account for some of the psychological aspects of zombification.[18] Particularly, this suggests cases where schizophrenia manifests a state of catatonia.

Perhaps this is the reason I found it so interesting. Is he nuts or what?

Anyway, it is pretty good if you like that kind of thing. A slow moving horror film with no one hopping out behind doors. Just plain old menace.

Another thing. She may actually be undead. Same difference, I guess.

Labels: films