Sexual Innuendoes, Mixed with Rain

Day 3 - Friday, 4 August

Two films made the buzz Friday receiving strong reactions from their audiences. The first was the highly anticipated Baise-moi (Rape Me) by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thi. On a more unexpected note, The Closer You Get, first film from Aileen Ritchie, was very well received at its midnight screening. This comedy zooms in on a small Irish village that goes through a transformation triggered by the idea of posting a marriage proposition in the personal ads of an American newspaper. Ritchie was beaming as she presented her film and came back on stage sending appreciate waves to the audience who gave her film a strong ovation. Even though the two films address completely different audiences, one scene in Ritichie's film (when the parish movie audience finds themselves at the screening of Bo Derek in 10 rather than The Ten Commandments) presented sexual innuendoes, creating a sort of flashback to the controversy that stirred the public earlier in the day at the Baise-moi screening.

The selection of Rape Me in the international competition of the Locarno Festival was indeed something of a brave deed (or an attention grabber). The stir which this film causes wherever it is shown might have been something of a deterrent for the festival organizers. But Marco Muller cut up all the sad fuss made about the film's "pornography" issue at the press conference by taking a very firm stand on the qualities of the banned "punk" film by Virginie Despentes and Coralie Trinh Thy.

"The most beautiful thing I read about the movie was by a critic who said that for the first time on screen, the representation of sex is equal to the rest. I feel that there is a deep ethic and aesthetic coherence to this film, which often does not exist in "pornographic" films, because the "aesthetic project" in these films is much different, indeed... But yet again, distinct classifications are not something natural, and we should not ignore that frontiers are receding within the international cinematography landscape... And that is a good thing..."

It was another rainy day in the Swiss summer resort town of Locarno. But since the sun peaked through early evening, the Piazza Grande double-feature screenings of Hamlet by Michael Almereyda and The Closer You Get were re-instated…until the rain reappeared and the umbrellas sprouted like mushrooms in the crowd. It was back to the Cinema Rex for the professionals and the Fevi Auditorium for the others. For these Friday night screenings, the audience showed up numerous and many were those that were turned away from the 3,200 seat Fevi showings.