All Slights Deserved

I mentioned Sexmission in passing a few weeks back as an example of how films can be massively popular in their country of original yet comparatively unknown elsewhere. A few years back it was adjudged to be the best film of the last thirty years by Polish filmgoers, much to the bemusement of more highbrow critics. Sexmission is a sci-fi comedy; a sub-genre that proved surprisingly successful in eastern bloc during the communist era, as evidenced by such works as the cult Czech film Tomorrow I’ll Wake Up and Scald Myself with Tea . Yet far from being an anomaly it makes perfect sense; science fiction - particularly that of the more dystopian variety - is often a means of commenting allegorically on the current milieu and dressing it in humour is a means of deflecting criticisms of being overtly political. Which is precisely how Sexmission operates; serving up a lampoon on the absurdities of totalitarianism which would have resonated strongly at the time and the skewed nostalgia...

A few years back Matthew Sweet wrote an excellent article about the decline in general awareness of great world cinema in our multi-channel age. It inspired as-yet-unfulfilled fantasy to have a conversation in a chip shop with a girl I'd never met before (or had I?) about Last Year At Marienbad . Were such an encounter to take place I suspect I might fall in love there and then. The movement amorphously defined as European 'art cinema' - particularly its golden era from the mid-fifties to the early seventies - is unquestionably my favourite, so I'll make no apologies for the fact it's going to crop up frequently in this blog. Taken as a whole it's a nexus of ideas and philosophies, yet with a shared conviction that film can, maybe should, be more than vicarious escapism. These are films that challenge your preconceptions; an incitement to thought. Sure, there's plenty of pretension along the way, but pro rata it probably comes out less than the dross Ho...