I thought that Pasolini's film "Salò o le 120 Diornate di Sodoma" was the best portrait of depravity I would see but this film exceeds "Salo". It is entitled "The Important Thing is to Love" because love is the sole good thing one can do amidst a world of utter ugliness where the sum of a man is "the ugliest things he can do".
Żuławski has created a film replete with sadness, melancholy, grief and misery and it is crafted so well that it is dazzling and, at times, beautiful. He is well assisted by his cast of actors, including his three beautiful leads, and the film's composer Georges Delerue, whose signature tune haunts the film as a discordant plaint.
The film depicts the relationship of a married couple to a man who becomes infatuated with the wife. They share the world of acting, film and pornography and each is a 'prostitute' in their own way. The husband, Jacques, is suicidally depressed and finds himself outside of life and not willing to enter life and engage. His wife, Nadine, is a broken personality who feels that Jacques saved her and she desires an acting career whilst making money as a porn star. Servais is a loner with a broken father; he has become involved with a porn/sex wheeler dealer, Mazelli, who is a gangster of sorts. All yearn to break free from the world they inhabit and Servais's plan, paying to have Nadine cast as Lady Anne in an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Richard III", seems a possible means of release. Like Richard III, the film's characters are somewhat deformed yet they are less ugly in their deformities than the superficially glamorous world they inhabit.
Of course Servais's plan fails. Words attributed to Rimbaud, which are the final words of Servais's late friend who died from liver failure, capture the tormented pains of the characters:
"Turmoil originated your poetry/ Immense forces served you/ Your entrails burst, death menaces/ Chosen City!/ Consume your shrieks In the deaf trumpet."
The film's themes seem clearer than the characters and their dense opaqueness. It is a series of brief, fast changing scenes that I found jarring, perhaps the intent to underline discord and distress. It is like one long howl. It is powerful and almost perfect.
Żuławski has created a film replete with sadness, melancholy, grief and misery and it is crafted so well that it is dazzling and, at times, beautiful. He is well assisted by his cast of actors, including his three beautiful leads, and the film's composer Georges Delerue, whose signature tune haunts the film as a discordant plaint.
The film depicts the relationship of a married couple to a man who becomes infatuated with the wife. They share the world of acting, film and pornography and each is a 'prostitute' in their own way. The husband, Jacques, is suicidally depressed and finds himself outside of life and not willing to enter life and engage. His wife, Nadine, is a broken personality who feels that Jacques saved her and she desires an acting career whilst making money as a porn star. Servais is a loner with a broken father; he has become involved with a porn/sex wheeler dealer, Mazelli, who is a gangster of sorts. All yearn to break free from the world they inhabit and Servais's plan, paying to have Nadine cast as Lady Anne in an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Richard III", seems a possible means of release. Like Richard III, the film's characters are somewhat deformed yet they are less ugly in their deformities than the superficially glamorous world they inhabit.
Of course Servais's plan fails. Words attributed to Rimbaud, which are the final words of Servais's late friend who died from liver failure, capture the tormented pains of the characters:
"Turmoil originated your poetry/ Immense forces served you/ Your entrails burst, death menaces/ Chosen City!/ Consume your shrieks In the deaf trumpet."
The film's themes seem clearer than the characters and their dense opaqueness. It is a series of brief, fast changing scenes that I found jarring, perhaps the intent to underline discord and distress. It is like one long howl. It is powerful and almost perfect.