Rating: ?
Dir: Guerrilla Metropolitana
Star: Juicy X, Mystery Woman, Elektra McBride, Guerrilla Metropolitana
I’m actually somewhat familiar with the director’s work, as he submitted a previous short, Corporate Torment (it Burns Like Hell), to FearCon. It was not selected. But I remember its avant-garde and transgressive approach. This reunited him with the lead of that, Juicy X, and pushes the envelope further, not least by running just over an hour. The results are like the cinematic equivalent of being water-boarded: I suspect Metropolitana, having said this “is not a film to be enjoyed”, would take that as a compliment – and may not be entirely wrong. It begins with a lengthy opening caption, explaining how the film was financed by another pseudonymous participant, McBride, who is allegedly the wife of an American TV evangelist and also participates through Facetime in the film.
We then get a monologue from X, reading a prepared statement, including thanks to the director, which is delivered with all the sincerity of an ISIS hostage delivering a communique. This may be the point. Per the press notes, “The aim of the director was to portray artistic freedom (from both conventional narrative structure as well as morality) through the language of sadism in the name of enlightenment.” I guess it’s a philosophy. The bulk of the film has X sexually abusing a victim (“Mystery Woman”, not even given the courtesy of a proper pseudonym), while McBride watches remotely and masturbates. Eventually, Metropolitana comes out from behind the camera, unsatisfied with proceedings, and continues the abuse himself, in a way reminiscent of Michael Findlay’s Snuff.
Most of this shot in a way which might trigger epileptic fits in some, and feels like it may have given me a brain tumour. To quote Videodrome, “I believe the visions caused the tumour, and not the other way around.” I did wonder if McBride’s financial contributions maybe didn’t stretch to the purchase of a tripod. Certainly, it feels like she might have got change from ten bucks, such is the defiantly low-fi nature of proceedings. Again per the notes, it was “shot on a weekend in a rented house in the outskirts of London without informing the owner of the actual use.” Probably wise. Yet the approach renders it impotent in some ways. At one point, a director voice-over tells us the sex we’re seeing is unsimulated. That this has to be stated, rather than being obvious (and it is not), indicates the film is perhaps less transgressive than it thinks.
If there’s a message which did resonate, it’s the eventual banality of all content. What was once shocking, eventually becomes mundane, forcing people to push further in search of new thrills. There’s a scene where Metropolitana is abusing the victim, and X is lying on the couch nearby, supremely disinterested, instead scrolling idly on her phone (top). The film also seeks to blur the line between observer and participant, thereby making the viewer here complicit in the “abuse” – quotes used advisedly, since everything here is consensual, despite appearances to the contrary. I can’t say I liked this. Not at all. But it did provoke thought, these five hundred words having flowed more easily than for many mainstream works.
And am I going to remember it? Yeah. I think I will.
[The film is out now on DVD from Blood Pact Films]