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| FLESH (1968) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: May 4 2015, 01:43 AM (317 Views) | |
| reesepd | May 4 2015, 01:43 AM Post #1 |
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Paul Reese.
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![]() New York City circa the years of Warhol and his factory. Artists going underground to be inventive and to tread the lines of experimentation within the realm of queer output. Paul Morrissey’s Flesh is a thoroughly queer film without drawing black-and-white contrasts on what exactly it’s leading character’s sexual preference is. The film operates in this expressive grey area, where a girlfriend is a lesbian and the man himself finds erotic encounters with other men. The film’s title isn’t even subtle: Flesh is pretty much about Joe Dallesandro’s body – how it stimulates arousal, how the man is stuck within it (aware or not), and also, in one of American cinema’s finest scenes, how the human body itself is innocent and natural - in this case, when the man is seen sitting beside his baby son on a thrift-driven carpet. The conversations Joe has with other people – whether it be the boring, bland pretension of a photographer or the hysteria of the friend reading to him – illustrate the man’s good intention and/or naïveté. His capability to throw all of his own responses for others alternates between funny and heartwarming – but ends on a cold, unknown note in Morrissey’s framework of the character’s events. Flesh is about Joe, and Joe is a product of his time; stuck in a place without really finding a place for himself. Does the man do anything for himself? Is he okay with just being a piece of flesh if that satisfies others? Is that all he’s been given to know? Opening the film on his sleeping face and bare ass, Morrissey also closes it with Joe falling asleep to sexual activity between his girlfriend and another woman. A cycle. Aimless. Stuck. Whatever Joe’s intention – all others have abused and/or used him for his body, and never seen him as anything but an object to desire. The film is a devastating zeitgeist – only a little over a decade away from HIV/AIDS coming into the very particular scene it analyzes. Time has turned the film into a heartbreaking time capsule; somber, essential, and purely beautiful. Edited by reesepd, May 4 2015, 01:44 AM.
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| He's got the fire, and he walks with it... | |
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| Vanda Duarte | May 4 2015, 03:00 AM Post #2 |
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Funny that you mentioned that. I saw this for the Mubi Top Films List Project (your submission IIRC) and one of the things that struck me is how oddly nonsexual most of his behavior is, even in the most sexual (for other people) situations. My impression is that Joe's character is asexual but IDK Edited by Vanda Duarte, May 4 2015, 03:01 AM.
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| wba | May 4 2015, 03:05 AM Post #3 |
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The Merciless
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Yay, Dalessandro. I guess it's difficult to not be drawn towards his more obvious qualities. He has a fine leading role in Fernando di Leo's masterful Vacanze per un massacro (1980), which is only the film it is because of the casting of Dalessandro as an in every aspect ambiguos villain, and ticks of much of the stuff about 'him' you describe in your post on Flesh (which I unfortunately haven't seen yet, as I'm unfamiliar with most of Morrissey's work) - albeit I'd guess in a more overtly 'brutal' way. |
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To please the majority is the requirement of the Planet Cinema. As far as I'm concerned, I don't make a concession to viewers, these victims of life, who think that a film is made only for their enjoyment, and who know nothing about their own existence. letterboxd * tumblr * website | |
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| reesepd | May 4 2015, 05:41 PM Post #4 |
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Paul Reese.
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It's funny you bring it up, Whyte Nite. I was the one who submitted it into the project.
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| He's got the fire, and he walks with it... | |
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| reesepd | May 4 2015, 05:44 PM Post #5 |
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Paul Reese.
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I must search this out. I adored di Leo's To Be Twenty. I am, personally, a huge fan of many of his performances. He's been in many of my favorite films of the 60s-70s era (almost all of the Morrissey and Warhol films he starred in, Gainsbourg's Je T'aime Moi Non Plus, Malle's Black Moon, and Borowczyk's The Streetwalker). Edited by reesepd, May 4 2015, 05:45 PM.
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| He's got the fire, and he walks with it... | |
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| wba | May 4 2015, 11:33 PM Post #6 |
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The Merciless
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Haven't seen much of his acting work (absolutely NEED to see the three you mentioned, though) but he's also in one of my favorite Breillat's Tapage Nocturne from the late 70s.
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To please the majority is the requirement of the Planet Cinema. As far as I'm concerned, I don't make a concession to viewers, these victims of life, who think that a film is made only for their enjoyment, and who know nothing about their own existence. letterboxd * tumblr * website | |
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