Tag: consent

Consent (Consentement)

Posted on by victorfraga

QUICK AND DIRTY: LIVE FROM TALLINN

The year is 1985. Vanessa Springora (Kim Higelin) is a beautiful, extremely intelligent and precocious 14-year-old living in Paris. Boys and girls of her age listen to The Cure and party. She reads Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, and can engage in a profound literary conversation with any adult. “She easily outshines me”, boasts her proud mum (Laetitia Casta). She becomes infatuated with 50-year-old writer Gabriel Matzneff (Jean-Paul Rouve), a pearly-eyed, handsome, seductive and famous French writer of Russian background. At first, he is very caring. He allows Vanessa to make decisions at her own accord, and take her time with sex. She feels empowered by his love, convinced that she’s his muse and muse and only source of inspiration. She dismisses her critics: “So many famous writers had younger lovers”. Her devotion is such that she threatens to take extreme measures (including suicide) should her mother attempt to break up their magical bond. The desperate parent abides, and even grows fond of the her unusual son-in-law (who happens to be older than her). Both Higelin and Casta deliver harrowing performances.

A couple of years pass. What seemed like the greatest love of all gradually descends into something far less romantic. Gabriel’s lifestyle is far more licentious than Vanessa anticipated. At first, she rejects rumours that her “boyfriend”, who promised to marry her, is seeing other women around her age. Then she decides to investigate his demeanour. She reads his most secretive writings, kept diligently under lock and key. What she finds is repulsive and potentially criminal. Gabriel never refutes the veracity of the facts when challenged. Instead he gaslights Vanessa, claiming that she’s hysterical and insensitive. He mocks feminism and insults the young woman and her mother.

The sex scenes are very realistic. At first they are vaguely moving, before morphing into a sinister power game, entirely controlled by Gabriel. He dictates the rules, demanding that Vanessa undresses at cue, subduing and forcing her into fellatio at his convenience. He enjoys seeing a spark of fear in her eyes. It is her youth and her vulnerability that he finds most arousing. He boasts on television that his lovers never go past the age of 20.

Our protagonist eventually musters the courage and rids herself of the toxic and abusive relationship, supported by a kind young man much closer top her age. But Gabriel has one final trick under his sleeve: he publishes a book with all the sordid details of their intimacy. This is one final attempt at legitimising and perpetuating his ownership over her body, while also ridiculing and punishing his former lover to the wider public . He is convinced that impunity will prevail, aided by his fame and powerful connections (he claimed then-President Francois Mitterrand amongst his friends). Vanessa is left battered and mortified, and a mental breakdown inevitably ensues.

Consent is a sexually frank movie that questions the limits of freedom of expression and transgression. Is it acceptable for an artist to degrade his lovers in order to achieve titillation and inspiration? Is ok for literature and film lovers to derive voyeuristic pleasure from the graphic portrayal of sexual intimidation? Is it admissable for a male artist to weaponise his artistic creation in order to sadistically punish women? These reflections resonated with me because I am and a great admirer of sexually subversive, unapologetic French artists from roughly the same time, particularly Serge Gainsbourg and Jean Eustache (neither one was a sadist and a paedophile, however both vigorously challenged the limits of seduction).

But not all is doom and gloom. More than three decades later, Vanessa puts her experience to pen and paper in order to mitigate the everlasting suffering caused by Matzneff’s grotesque and exploitative books detailing their sex life, and his deeply misogynistic views of a lover who dared to abandon him. And filmmaker Vanessa Filho turns his memoirs into a film. Consent is a literary female revenge movie, and one that’s gripping from beginning to end (this impeccable biopic justifies every single one of its 125 minutes of duration). What the film fails to mention is that Gabriel Matzneff is still alive (now aged 87), and he has never been charged for his crimes (France’s statute of limitations meant the case was dismissed). I hope this film shows at his local cinema, and that he walks past the theatre and sees the huge posters on his way to buy his his morning baguette.

Consent just premiered in the Official Selection of the 27th Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.

Rule 34 (Regra 34)

Posted on by Redmond Bacon

QUICK SNAP: LIVE FROM LOCARNO

Who says you can’t do it all? Simone (Sol Miranda) is a young Black bisexual Brazilian woman with two very different professions. During the day she is studying to be a public defender, protecting the most vulnerable in contemporary society; by night, she is a cam girl, performing sex acts on camera for male attention. Just by existing, she is everything Jair Bolsonaro hates.

The title shows that anything is possible, even in a country where culture is under attack by bigots like in Brazil. Rule 34 is an internet rule that if you think of something, there will be a pornographic depiction of it online (feel free to close this browser and try it yourself!). People like Simone, although often neglected, genuinely exist, and they deserve their own cinematic portrait.

The good news is that we get a cracking, sparkling, discursive and compelling character study with Julia Murat’s film, examining the boundaries of consent, what it means to seek pain, and the intersection of systemic oppression and personal choice. Simone herself is on a mission to decolonise her own depiction as a black woman online, arguing that much Black BDSM depiction has connotations of slavery. This is linked to the wider difficulties that Black people face in Brazil, as well as women and minorities.

Instead of a simple polemic however, Murat treats us to a film that pushes back against boundaries, while never settling for easy answers. Discussions between the law students are emboldened and intellectual, with few stupid questions and answers, breaking down simple binaries of black/white, male/female, endlessly looking for the grey areas that the law — by its structural nature — cannot find its way around.

But if the law cannot provide closure or liberation, perhaps sex can. Simone is in a ménage à trois with two of her fellow students, male and female alike, freely showing what can happen when people are informed of what they want to do with their own bodies. Murat makes some bold choices here, displaying full-frontal nudity, asphyxiation, spanking and choking; the likes of which could easily be exploitive in the hands of another director. All the time, however, Simone is looking to push the boundaries, resulting in a spiky feminist film that is both exciting to watch and thought-provoking at the same time.

At the centre is Miranda herself, who has no difficulty holding the attention of the camera as the film intuitively edits between different moments of her life, showing the full, complex spectrum of her character. At one point, she just sits alone and eats what appears to be an onion. It should be a kind of throwaway scene, but in the hands of an actor this assured, it had me strangely compelled. The kind of performance that can change the entire tenor of a film, it’s no wonder Murat chooses to end the film on a close-up. With a face that cinematic, it would be rude not to.

Rule 34 Locarno Film Festival plays as part of the Concorso internazionale at the , running from 3-13th August.

In defence of Catherine Deneuve and wordless seduction

Posted on by victorfraga

Sex is subversive by nature. It must not be regimented and sanitised. “Excuse me, madam, may I please insert my penis is your vagina, but only if it’s not too much trouble, of course” isn’t the sexiest introduction to intercourse. Seduction and flirting often preclude words. Consent can be negotiated in many ways, not necessarily with onerous and unambiguous words. The nuances of sexual attraction often rely on ambiguity. Yet the Swedish seem to disagree. They plan to pass a new law requiring “explicit” and “clearly-worded consent before sexual contact.

This is part of a much broader movement against the rape culture, which is pervasive in many societies and cultures, and the movie industry is no exception. Harvey Weinstein and many others are a testament that women have been consistently abused, and their horrific predicament has been dismissed as futile for too long. But then came the backlash. From women even. Yesterday Catherine Deneuve (pictured below in Bunuel’s 1967 classic Belle de Jour), Catherine Millet and 98 other French female artists stoked fire into the discussion by publishing an open letter defending a man’s right to “hit on women”.

I’m a gay man, and – while of course I agree that the rape culture must not be tolerated – I’m also in agreement with Deneuve and Millet. We must choose our weapons more carefully. There is a lingering puritanism and sexphobia in some of the arguments proposed by the #MeToo movement. We must be careful not to radicalise the movement, therefore opening another can of worms. A woman in the US has recently claimed harassment after a man said “hello”. Plus the anti-rape rhetoric is being used for very questionable political purposes. In Germany, Austria and Scandinavia, the far-right is using rape allegations in order to stigmatise Syrian refugees. Norway is providing compulsory anti-rape courses to male and Muslim refugees. This fuels misandrism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. Three ugly birds out of the cage, all at once.

This is why I would like to take the opportunity to celebrate our freedom to flirt and to have sex. We must not monitor and regulate seduction. Ultimately, if Sweden does approve the law requiring “clearly-worded” consent, the sex that Alma (Bibi Andersson) describes in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) – in what’s often described as “the most erotic scene in the history of cinema” – could be made illegal. Read it yourself below and reach your own conclusion. Nothing in it is clearly-worded. The women barely speak and the men never open their mouths. And that’s how sex and seduction in cinema should remain: dirty, nuanced and enigmatic.

…

.

“I went to the beach on my own. It was a warm and nice day.There was another girl there. She had come from another island because our beach was sunnier and more secluded. We lay there completely naked and sunbathed… dozing off and on, putting sunscreen on. We had silly straw hats on. Mine had a blue ribbon. I lay there… looking out at the landscape, at the sea and the sun. It was kind of funny.

Suddenly I saw two figures on the rocks above us. They hid and peeped out occasionally. “Two boys are looking at us,” I said to the girl. Her name was Katarina. “Let them look,” she said, and turned over on her back. I had a funny feeling. I wanted to jump up and put my suit on, but I just lay there on my stomach with my bottom in the air, unembarrassed, totally calm. And Katarina was next to me with her breasts and big thighs. She was just giggling. I noticed that the boys were coming closer. They just stood there looking at us. I noticed they were very young.

The boldest one approached us… and squatted down next to Katarina. He pretended to be busy picking his toes. I felt very strange. Suddenly Katarina said to him, “Hey, you, why don’t you come over here?” Then she took his hand and helped him take off his jeans and shirt. Suddenly he was on top of her. She guided him in and held his butt. The other boy just sat and watched. I heard Katarina whisper in the boy’s ear and laugh. His face was right next to mine. It was red and swollen. Suddenly I turned and said, “Aren’t you coming to me, too?” And Katarina said, “Go to her now.” He pulled out of her and… then fell on top of me, completely hard. He grabbed my breast. It hurt so much!

I was overwhelmed and came almost immediately. Can you believe it? I wanted to tell him to be careful not to make me pregnant… when he came. I felt something I’d never felt in my life… how his sperm was shooting inside me. He held my shoulders and bent backwards. I came over and over. Katarina lay there watching and held him from behind.

After he came, she took him in her arms and used his hand to make herself come. When she came, she screamed like a banshee. The three of us started laughing. We called to the other boy, who was sitting on the slope. His name was Peter. He seemed confused and was shivering there in the sunshine. Katarina unbuttoned his pants and started to play with him. And when he came, she took him in her mouth. He bent down and kissed her back. She turned around, took his head in both hands, and gave him her breast. The other boy got so excited that he and I started all over again. It was just as nice as before. Then we had a swim and went our separate ways.”

*All the images on this article are from Bibi Andersson in Persona, except for Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour.