Pretty Pictures

Have you ever seen a movie so visually stunning and breathtakingly beautiful that your long term memory held fast to the images and chucked the plot and dialogue and even the names of the actors and director on the garbage heap?

I was fifteen when Ridley Scott's Legend came out, but already somewhat of a film critic. I thought Tom Cruise was a beaver-faced yuck machine and wished he'd either don a pair of pants or keep his fucking legs closed whilst wearing a furry thong. I hated the script, which sounded like Shakespeare thrown into a Brat Pack flick. But damn! The haunting music? The gothic bridal gown? The confectionary forests of sugar fairies and sweet cascades of flower petals and the unspoiled, majestic beauty of the unicorns? My eyes had orgasms for hours. Ridley Scott's imagery was perfection, right down to the last puff of pollen floating by on a spring breeze. The story however... well, it was too violent and graphic for kids, too saccharine for adults and was ultimately crushed into soggy goo beneath the weight of the superior cinematography. I used to watch it muted with Tangerine Dream's soundtrack playing on Ye Olde Tapedeck in the background.

Thankfully, all of the movies I am about to mention can be watched with the sound on. But it doesn't matter. I chose these films for one reason, and one superficial reason only: they are all pretty. Very pretty. Gorgeous, in fact. Every frame exploding with pastel gloriousness, every costume a fairy tale come true. Several of them are Czech, a couple French, one silent but for the music. It doesn't matter. You don't have to understand what's being said or even understand the intricacies of their plots. These films are beautiful and can be watched in full for aesthetics alone.

Blood Tea & Red String (2006)

Once upon a time, long ago and far away, the aristocratic White Mice traveled to the realm of the creatures who lived under the great oak tree. The White Mice commissioned a doll from the Oak People, but not just any doll: a lovely porcelain doll with raven black hair and apple red cheeks. With a handful of gold coins for down payment, the Oak People get right to work. But the doll, upon completion, is so beautiful that the Oak People decide to keep her for themselves and refuse to hand her over to the White Mice, no matter how many more gold coins are offered.

Enraged, the White Mice carry out a kidnapping of the doll whilst the Oak People lie asleep. Returning to their kingdom with their lovely prize the White Mice rejoice, celebrating with cake and music and intoxicating blood tea. But the Oak People refuse to give up so easily and set off on a perilous quest through poisonous gardens, into the realm of the Frog Magician and past the deadly web of the Spider Queen, determined to save their beloved doll.

Blood Tea & Red String took thirteen years to complete. Thirteen YEARS of painstaking stop motion, loving detail and dogged determination. Every single frame of this film is bursting with life, even when the subject is death. Every blade of grass, every puff of wind, every wrinkle in the cellophane rivers and fountains that endlessly flow through the land are wholly enchanting and convincingly alive. But this is no cutesy little romp through candy-colored magicland, and Blood Tea is not recommended for small children. Despite the smiling flowers and flitting butterflies, the theme of this film is very much Death and Decay, and the images of skull-headed birds, cockroach infested cakes and the Victorian doll-faced Spider Queen killing anything and everything which strays too close to her blood red web will doubtless appeal to the Gothic aesthetics of the morbidly inclined, but will scare the shit out of impressionable youngsters. If you can afford a child psychologist, hey – go for it. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.

With no spoken dialog (except for the squealing of drunken mice and the cawing of crows), the simplest of story lines and a haunting flute soundtrack, Blood Tea & Red String is very much a visual experience, a film to sit back and watch unfold like a beautiful dream…or a horrific nightmare. Or, perhaps, both.





Valerie & Her Week of Wonders (1970)

Valerie, a young brunette beauty, has just had her first menstrual period. She is no longer a child, and almost instantly, a whole new world opens up before her, filled with sex, incest, blood, sin and vampires. A village wedding brings with it a troupe of performers, among them a Nosferatu-faced ghoul with an unfortunate case of Austin Powers dental work. Nevertheless, he seduces both Valerie and her grandmother, who literally sells Valerie’s inheritance to be young once more for her pasty faced lover. Valerie’s young boyfriend Orlik is always there to save Valerie from worse than death, having gifted her with a magical pearl which she swallows whenever she finds herself in trouble. But Orlik, it turns out, may also be her brother. And her vampire lover may also be her father. And her grandmother may also be her mother and her second cousin. What in the shit is going on here?

To be honest, I really didn’t care. Valerie, much like Rosaline in Neil Jordan’s 1984 menstrual-horror film The Company Of Wolves, is taking that mystical journey from childhood to adultery…uh, I mean adulthood. It’s a darkly erotic, trippy fantasy world through which Valerie floats dreamily, draped in pretty lace dresses, cuddling with doves and swimming in lily pad strewn ponds amid the flowery fields.

But this isn’t a 70s Tampax commercial by any means. When it gets dark, it gets dark, and poor virginal Valerie finds herself evading the clutches of a horny priest, drinking chicken blood, getting trapped in an underground tomb and being burned at the stake before all is said and done.. Jaroslava Schallerova, who really was thirteen when this was filmed, turns in a flawless performance as Valerie, although it’s weird watching her doff her clothes and prance around in the buff. I mean, she was literally just a kid! I can’t imagine how the priest, the vampire and the myriad village lesbians in this film evaded prosecution for inappropriate sexual conduct with a minor. Holy fucking Eastern Bloc, Batman!

However, I remember being thirteen once myself, and when you’re a thirteen year old girl, you’re convinced you’re grown up, so it wasn’t too hard to look past Valerie’s nude nakedness with no clothes on and appreciate the tasty gothic beauty of this slightly porny Alice In Wonderland. It really is an amazingly gorgeous film, despite a ho-hum transfer. I literally couldn’t tear my eyes away, and actually zapped straight off to amazon once this was over and ordered myself a copy of my very own. I just know I’ll want to drown in the dark gorgeousness of this film again and again.

Oh, and if Mr. Vampire Guy ever gets himself a decent dental plan, I call first dibs. What’s not to love about a pasty, snazzy dresser who carries a Maltese puppy around in the folds of his majestic cloak? Yum..

Donkeyskin (1970)

Of all the fairy tales translated by Grimm and adapted by Disney into kid-friendly tales of magic and romance, only Donkeyskin remains untouchable. The tale of a handsome king driven mad by his wife's untimely death, a wife whose beauty was so transcendent that her deathbed wish is for her husband to remarry only her physical equal, and their daughter who finds herself the target of her half-mad father's warped lust, Donkeyskin just cannot be cleaned up for kids no matter how many catchy tunes or dancing utensils one might dig up and throw into its midst. 

Thank god for the French. As both the radiant dying queen and the innocent, beautiful princess, Catherine Deneuve plays the title role like a perfect china doll, graceful and serene whether she's draped in the foul hide of a dead donkey or gaily singing and baking a love cake for a handsome prince. Delphine Seyrig plays her flippant fairy godmother, floating about in gossamer gowns and saying whatever she damn well pleases. 

And yet somehow, this film manages to be light and fluffy and fun despite its lurid and horrible subject matter. It has all of the musical pageantry and frolicking in flowery fields of a Disney epic without being Disneyfied at all. And...wait, why is a helicopter bringing the king and his new wife to the wedding of the prince? Oh well, who cares? It's pretty!

Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)

My mom picked this one. I made her watch it with me several Halloween's ago and she was entranced by the image of the ghost ship silently gliding into the canal of Wismar, lonely and abandoned, coming to a sorrowful halt as its prow gently scrapes up against the retaining wall.There it sits, once majestic, now only a plague-ridden corpse, innocently releasing its horrible shipment into the streets of the picturesque German town: a swarm of infected rats and a single vampire, stealing through the pre-dawn streets in his flowing black cape, gliding past the windows of the ruined abbey and longing pitifully for the beautiful Lucy, who watches the devastation unfold around her with the horror of a lost child.

As the plague decimates the town, the townsfolk - once so proper and elegantly attired, drift into the streets for a last, mad party - feasting amongst the rats, dancing through the smoke and ashes, defiantly joyous in the face of their impending doom. Herzog mutes the cacophony on screen and instead plays a mournful dirge as Lucy wanders among the revelers, the only pure and untouched citizen left in a town of the damned. It's a terribly sorrowful sight, but somehow regal and perhaps best expressed by the family that Lucy encounters towards the end of her wanderings. Seated around a grand dining room table in the middle of the cobblestone street, an undulating sea of rats at their feet, a family calmly takes their last supper, pale and polite, keeping up appearances of the aristocracy they are soon to leave behind.

Sedmikrasky (1966)
aka: Daisies

Dude, I have no idea what this movie was about. And I don't care. Two girls, both named Marie (although one is called Julie at one point) gaily parade through post-war Czechoslovakia, having made up their minds to be rebellious, sexually liberated and all around naughty. They cheat sugar daddies out of free meals, dance drunkenly in restaurants, set fire to their apartment, seduce random men, wreck dining halls, swing from chandeliers and mock authority at every opportunity. The film - which seems terribly cute now - was banned upon its release for being lewd and wanton.

The Company Of Wolves (1984)

Somewhere in the remote English countryside, a prepubescent girl suffering from what may very well be her first bout of menstrual cramps, takes to her childhood attic bedroom and dreams herself into a fairy tale forest, where her naggy older sister is eaten by wolves, her grandmother knits a new woolen cape of the reddest shade and a huntsman comes calling to introduce little Rosaleen to the world of the wild wolf, free and primal and lusty.

Little Red Riding Hood may have served as a warning to young girls not to veer off the path of righteousness and purity, but this translation suggests that the veer cannot be avoided, so you may as well embrace it. You can either be slain by the wolf, or become one of the pack; choose wisely. But remember that wolves mate for life, and in fearing no man Rosaleen makes her choice bravely and leaves the gingerbread cottage of her childhood behind, venturing deeper into the dark woods she's been warned away from all her life and discovering just how deep the shadows are, and how all consuming.

Packed to bursting with filtered sunlight, soft woodland creatures, brilliant colors, Victorian toys, lacy dresses and strange metaphorical imagery, Wolves is the epitome of the transformation of a girl into a woman: dark, frightening, bloody, messy, forbidden, beautiful and freeing. Director Neil Jordan has yet to surpass this visual masterpiece, although his recent foray into vampirism - Byzantium - comes pretty goddamned close.


Barbe Bleue (2009)
aka Bluebeard

In 1950s France, sisters Marie-Anne and Catherine settle down for the afternoon and reread the story of Bluebeard, despite the fact that the bloody tale frightens little Marie-Anne.  Rewind to the late 1600s, where an embittered widow struggles to make ends meet and provide for her two young daughters, Marie-Catherine and Anne. Anne is the eldest, a stern girl somewhat like her mother with long, frizzy red hair and a disdain for her mourning gowns. Little Marie-Catherine is more exuberant, her dark eyes sparkling and her smile clashing with her morbid black dress. Unable to provide dowries for her girls, mother takes the girls to an open party thrown by Lord Bluebeard, who is looking for a new wife. Expecting the elder Anne to be chosen, both mother and sister are shocked when little Marie-Catherine hits it off with the much older Lord Bluebeard, and eagerly agrees to be his wife.

Their love is genuine, and Marie-Catherine is happy to live in a castle, wear new dresses that no one has ever worn before her and feast beside her husband on delicacies. The couple do not consummate their marriage as Marie-Catherine is still much too young, but both she and Bluebeard are content to wait, and precocious Marie-Catherine seems every bit as curious about sex as Bluebeard is to get an heir.

But a discovery within her lord and husband's castle whilst he is away on business dampens the love between child-bride and Bluebeard. And when Bluebeard returns home and realizes that Marie-Catherine's childlike curiosity has betrayed his bloody secrets, out comes the cutlass against her slim, virgin-white throat. Can she be saved? Or will she be added to the cellar grave of the wives who came before her? Either way, it's time to grow up, and the experience will not be what Marie-Catherine was expecting, nor will she ever be able to go back.

Enter the Void (2009)

Seemingly a straightforward tale about a small time American drug dealer living in Tokyo, who is finally reunited with his beloved sister, whom he has not seen since their parents died in a tragic car crash when they were both small children. Oscar's little sister Linda is now a knockout and gets a job easily at a flashy strip joint. Oscar himself is conflicted, seemingly struggling with Oedipal issues and unable to determine is his love for his sister is of the sibling variety or the sexual.

The film then violently switches gears. Following a drug deal gone wrong, Oscar is shot and dies in a dingy bathroom stall and the remainder of the movie is shown from his point of view as his spirit lingers over Tokyo, watching how his death affects the lives of his sister and their friends, and how his parents death molded his personality and his future decisions.

Enter the Void, directed by French filmmaker Gaspar Noe, is a view through the ultimate kaleidoscope from Purgatory to Earth, and it's a candy-colored, neon flashing, acid-tripping, sugar sonic, psychedelic rainbow of death and sorrow, but with an ending so unexpected and so illuminating it seems almost happy after all.

But be warned; it's a graphic, violent, orgiastic journey to the end, which is only a new beginning, and people with seizure disorders probably should not sit through the opening credits without their medication on hand.