Amer (2009) Helene Cattet and Burno Forzani [...] I tend to lock with blushing face, and I keep my self-experiencing for-other, my opportunities are continually dying, or the distances to deploy to me from the stairs where there might be someone from that dark corner where I could hide a human presence. Moreover, if I shiver at the slightest sound, if every creak announces a look, because I am already in a state of being-watched . Jean-Paul Sartre [1]
penetrated her gaze on an image at the time that this view was regarded as the death of every image ... then certainly the foreign body (the image) had lodged in her eye and tried to go further . Maurice Blanchot [2]
What you see and what you see [3]
The famous knife scene U n dog Andalusia (1930) work, no doubt, as a warning, a warning against the voyeuristic impulse that defines film viewers. That telltale look that Lars Thorwald launched LB Jeffries in Rear Window (1955) was also addressed to us viewers. To the extent that the photographer was discovered escoptofilia also was evidence of our desires. The film viewer is always a reflection of the voyeur and the film a perfect tool to meet their wishes. If we stop to think about the history of cinema is full of voyeurs. The films of directors such as Luis Buñuel, Alfred Hitchcock, Krzysztof Kieslowski or Brian de Palma is prepared and dedicated to the figure of the voyeur. In films like Peeping Tom (1960) Michael Powell, or Blue Velvet (1990) David Lynch the voyeur is presented as a sadistic tendencies character in Blow -up (1960) Michelangelo Antonioni, the conversation (1977) Fracis Ford Coppola or Blow Out (1981) Brian de Palma (the latter two would be an auditory voyeurism) the bystander was a person who wanted to discover what hiding behind the appearances, look and listen compulsively and insistent because he always hides something more beneath the surface. In fact consecrated and recurrent figure of the detective, the investigator and photographer for professional reasons has always similarities with that of the voyeur. In works like Key (1959) Kon Ichikawa or A chant d'amour (1950) Jean Genet presented the figure of the voyeur tied to the exhibitionist. The position of the object and the subject enters a certain ambiguity when the observer is aware of it. As Gerty MacDowell, the lame Nausica thirteenth chapter of James Joyce's Ulysses, that despite the observation that Leopold Bloom while practicing onanism hidden, and seems to enjoy the comfort of the excited Bloom. Or disturbing picture of Eric Fischl, Bad Boy (1981), where a teenager steals woman's purse while naked in bed covers.
I would venture to say that few films have a visual and sound processing so successful over the look and escoptofilia as Amer. The Belgian pair formed by Hélène Cattet Bruno Forzani made a debut of impeccably. An audiovisual experience more sensitive than narrative, as Helene Catter and barely Forzani Brunno include dialogues (and no need to find it), because their intention is to reflect the subjective feelings of Peeping Tom, what you see and what looks at you. In spite of its experimental Belgian partner completely rejects the narrative. The film is about a woman's life into three stages of life: childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and how the different periods carry a kind of look, a kind of voyeurism conditioned by the experience. Something similar to what has been done by fellow Belgian Dominique Deruddere in Love Is a Dog from Hell (1987). But in this voyeur views were always related to the discovery and frustration in sex, however the film Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani would be close to George Bataille, sex is inevitably linked with death. Anton
Felser perfectly reflected in a painting the human instinct to Skimming through the lock (1895). This burning desire is what makes the infancy stage of the protagonist. Its voyeuristic experiences are marked by the first approach sexuality, the discovery of what parents do when they retreat into the room, and with death, his vision of the mummified body of his grandfather. The young girl wants to see and not be seen, perhaps because his eyes have some transgression of the rules. All this stage of youth is an air of nightmare, she is haunted by a ghost with a black mantilla is undoubtedly his grandmother. Sound treatment commitment, throughout the film, by a hearing subjectification of objects, friction, fabric, steps, panting all the amazingly increased by creating a sound composition that affects our senses. The wonderful picture at a given moment becomes primary colors, red, green and blue, does nothing but increase our perception that we are witnessing a nightmare. The transitions between the different stages are actually achieved, in a formally correct. The stage of adolescence would be marked by an awareness of being watched and the question "What is to be seen? that made Jean-Paul Sartre.La young man discovers his ability to attract the gaze of others, to be the focus of voyeuristic desire, so the camera so fragmented Belgian couple erotic writing body , a metonymic vision of his physiognomy. The sensual scene motorists still reveals a certain modesty and insecurity among the young. All those male eyes that seem to be devouring her with eyes placed in a position of tension and shame, incredibly achieved by Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani .
maturity is marked the return home of children and the clear awareness of the sexual potential. The erotic taxi ride to the family mansion looks more like a sexual encounter a vehicle traveling. The ability to demonstrate the enormous groups of directors make the trip in an orgasmic experience. (No doubt one of the best scenes collected throughout the film.) The reunion with the old home as it is with old ghosts and fears. No doubt this final installment of the film has many echoes with Chambre jaune (2002) conducted by the Belgian couple years earlier. As George Bataille said: vision or image of killing can awaken the desire for sexual pleasure because the field of eroticism is essentially the field of violence of rape [5]. For So the mature segment of the film is not far from Japanese Koji Wakamatsu, and much of his filmography is divided from the union of Eros and Thanathos.En films like The Embryo Hunts in
Secret (1966) or Violated Angels (1967) sex and death appear linked together. Belgian couple perfects all visual fetishism, use smart objects and clothes with sadistic eroticism is very balanced for a special assembly.
viewers will criticize Amer by an excessive and exorbitant formalism or an experimental vocation abusive. But few works of art have made a very interesting approach to look voyeurism and sexuality. A sensory experience that is difficult to translate into language. Amer undoubtedly belongs to those films that are worth more sense that we live them and .
- Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness , 176 pp
- Blanchot, Maurice, Thomas the dark Ed: Pre-Texts, 2002, p. 12
- film Helene Cattet and Bruno Forzani has, apparently, many ralaciones the Italian Giallo subgenre popularized in the 70's. The reason why I do not mention or reference I have not seen any film belonging to this subgenre of horror. But the interested reader will find a great Transit Tony Junyent text that speaks of the influences absorbed from the Giallo Amer.
- "How can we simply say, as do Freud, the exhibition is the opposite of voyeurism or that masochism is the opposite of sadism? ". Lacan, Jacques, Seminar 11: The four fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis . Argentina.Paidos, 63 pp
- Bataille, George, Eroticism, Fabula Tusquets, 2007.
